The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
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The long version This document is seeded. In cases of copyright infringement this information will be used to track down the user ID that was used to acquire the document. Upon your purchase of the document you agreed to the Terms and Conditions of Killer Guides (http://www.killerguides.com/terms-and-conditions). In case you redistribute this document or parts thereof without our written permission a contractual fine of up to $10,000 applies. If you bought or received this document free of charge from any other party, you can report them on our contact page (http://www.killerguides.com/contact). We reward reports that help to track down a case of copyright infringement with up to $100. © Copyright www.killerguides.com 2008. All rights reserved. Lord of the Rings Online is a registered trademark of Turbine, Inc.. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Table of Contents Important
2
The short version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The long version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Introduction
7
Character Creation
8
Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Dwarf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Passive Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Racial Accomplishments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Elf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Passive Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Racial Accomplishments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Hobbit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Passive Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Racial Accomplishments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Passive Abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Racial Accomplishments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Statistics
15
Hope and Dread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Might . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Agility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Vitality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Fate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Armor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Resistances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Traits and Deeds: the Basics
20
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Deeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Class Deeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Racial and Social Deeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Region Deeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Racial Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Class Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Legendary Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Virtue Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Virtue Traits by Grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Minstrel Class Deeds and Corresponding Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Trait Builds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Solo Build . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Fellowship Build . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Minstrel Basics
33
Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Ballads, Anthems, Tales and Songs: The Minstrel's Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Combat as a Minstrel
35
The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Things you should know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Healing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Resurrection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Crowd Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Minstrel 101
39
Basic Skills and Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 The Minstrel played Solo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 The Minstrel in a Fellowship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 A Guide to Middle Earth
56
Crafting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Resource Farming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Leveling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
(15-18) Bree Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 (18-22) Lone Lands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 (22-24) Trestlebridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 (24-26) Lone Lands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 (26-36) The North Downs (Estledin, Othrikar, etc.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 (36-40) Evendim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 (40-50) Rivendell, Trollshaws, Misty Mountains, Angmar, Forochel . . . . 69 (50-60) Eregion, The Mines of Moria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Eregion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 The Mines of Moria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 (60-65) Mirkwood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Western Mirkwood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Central Mirkwood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Eastern Mirkwood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Minstrel Class Quests and related Deeds/Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 A Song for Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 A Minstrel's Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 The Finest Melody is Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Articles on Harmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Implements of Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 A Lesson from Lindir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Great Barrows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Garth Agarwen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Fornost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Urugarth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Carn Dum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Barad Gularan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Glinghant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Ost Elendil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Haudh Valandil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 The Rift of Nurz Ghashu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Gear Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Reputation Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Instance Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Rift Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Helegrod Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Crafted Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Conclusion
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Introduction With glorious songs and tales sung of great heroes of ages past you bring hope to the darkest of times and inspire your Fellowship to great deeds. You can turn the tides of battle by restoring morale to your companions and lifting up their hearts if defeat has overcome them. Your songs and ballads strike fear into the hearts of your enemies, and they tremble at your cries. The Minstrel is the class of choice for those players who thrive on group play in Fellowships. While they are a highly-survivable class on their own, they lack the DPS (damage per second) to compare with the other classes of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar when it comes to soloing. The primary roll of the Minstrel is that of a healer.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Character Creation
characters from a US server to a European server or vice versa, so make sure the version of the game you purchase is the region you plan on staying within. You can, however, pay for a character move from one server to another within your own region. US players can transfer to other US servers, and European players can transfer to other European servers.
When creating your Minstrel there are several factors in helping you decide what is the best race choice. Ultimately most races end up being nearly the same at the cap, but there are a few unique differences that are race-specific and can provide individuals with an aesthetic difference between their characters and others.
Race
There is also the choice between a normal PVE (Player vs. Environment) server and a Roleplay PVE server. Again, this difference is purely aesthetic; there are no open PVP servers for LOTRO, so regardless of your choice you will be playing on a PVE server. The only difference between normal servers and the Roleplay servers is the naming policy which is strictly enforced on those Roleplay PVE servers.
The race of your character is purely cosmetic, although there are a few unique racial benefits that each class has which define them from the other races within Middle Earth. Some racial abilities are more useful to Minstrels than others, but they are hardly game-breaking in their usefulness. When picking one of the four races the most important thing to remember is that you are the person behind the character, no one else. Pick something that you will enjoy playing long-term. Don't be afraid to roll something entirely against-the-majority if it's something that sparks your interest or something you will enjoy. It's just a game, after all!
It is also important to note that there is a difference between the European and US servers for LOTRO. If you wish to play on a European server you must purchase a European copy of the game from a store that carries the Codemasters version of the game. Codemasters is the company who distributes the game throughout Europe. If you wish to play on a US server you must purchase a US copy of the game. You cannot switch
You can also visit the official Lorebook or the LOTRO wiki for more information on classes and races.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Http://lorebook.lotro.com
Passive Skills
http://lotro-wiki.com All of the Racial Accomplishments are Traits that must be slotted in your Racial Traits slots in order to benefit from them.
Lost Dwarf-Kingdoms—Reduced Fate (-8) Stocky—Reduced Agility (-8) Sturdiness—Increased Might (+15) and Vitality (+10) and improved Common Damage mitigation (+1.0%)
Dwarf
Unwearying in Battle—Increased Morale and Power regeneration (0.05%) in combat, although reduced out of combat (-1 morale, -0.5 power).
- Passive Skills - Racial Accomplishments - Elf - Passive Skills - Racial Accomplishments - Hobbit - Passive Skills - Racial Accomplishments - Man - Passive Abilities - Racial Accomplishments
Virtuous Dwarf—This gives you a +1 to the following three Traits: Honesty, Loyalty, Fidelity.
Racial Accomplishments Enmity of the Goblins -Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 Goblins -Reward is the Fateful Dwarf Trait, +20 Fate. -Rank 2 is available at level 29 -Defeat 100 Goblins -Reward is the Return to Thorin's Gate Trait, which is a teleport back to the Dwarven starting area. It has a 1 hour
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide refresh timer.
-Reward is the Dwarf-Endurance Trait, which provides a Vitality buff to your Fellowship.
-Rank 3 is available at level 35 -Defeat 250 Goblins
-Rank 2 is available at level 35 -Reward is the Endurance of Stone Trait. +75% common, fire, and shadow mitigation for 10 seconds. 1 hour cooldown. Enmity of the Dourhands
-Defeat 150 Trolls -Rewards you with the Shield Brawler Trait, which gives you a 2% increased block chance. This is a passive ability.
-Rank 1 is available at level 13
Elf
-Defeat 50 Dourhand Dwarves -Reward is the Head-butt ability. This does 15 common damage to start (goes up with your level) and has a 5 second cooldown. It does not cost any power and is a melee ability. -Rank 2 is available at level 19
Passive Skills Agility of Agility (+15)
-Defeat 100 Dourhand Dwarves -Rewards you with the Guild and Might Bonus Trait. This gives you a 5% bonus to Spider's Guile and Ent's Strength Fellowship maneuvers. -Rank 3 is available at level 25. -Defeat 150 Dourhand Dwarves -Rewards you with the Dwarf Axe-damage Bonus. This gives you a 2% one-handed and two-handed axe damage bonus.
the
Woods—Improved
Fading of the Firstborn—Reduced Fate (-8) Sorrow of the Firstborn—Reduced Morale (-20) and out of combat Morale regeneration (-1.0) Suffer No Illness—Improved resistance to disease and poison (1%) Virtuous Elf—This gives you a +1 bonus to the following three Traits: Wisdom, Patience, Charity.
Enmity of the Trolls -Rank 1 is available at level 30 -Defeat 100 Trolls
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide -Rewards you with the Return to Rivendell Trait. Once slotted this provides you with a teleport to Rivendell.
Racial Accomplishments
-Rank 3 is available at level 35 Enmity of the Goblins
-Defeat 250 Orcs
-Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 Goblins -Reward is the Sylvan Shadows Trait. Enables your character to Stealth. It has a 30 minute cooldown.
-Reward is the Eldar's Grace Trait. This gives you a 75% parry chance for 10 seconds on a 1 hour cooldown. Enmity of the Drakes -Rank 1 is available at level 29
-Rank 2 is available at level 19
-Defeat 100 Drakes
-Defeat 100 Goblins -Reward is Tactics and Conviction Bonus. This gives you a 5% bonus to Eagle's Cry and Stallion's Spirit Fellowship maneuvers.
-Rewards you with the Elf One-handed sword damage bonus. This is a passive 2% bonus. -Rank 2 is available at level 35. -Defeat 150 Drakes
-Rank 3 is available at level 25 -Defeat 150 Goblins -Rewards you with the Elf Bow-damage Bonus. This is a passive 2% bonus to all bow damage.
-Reward is the Power of the Eldar Trait. This gives your entire Fellowship a 2% increase to their power pool for 10 minutes. It has a 1 hour cooldown.
Enmity of the Orcs -Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 Orcs -Reward is the Friend of Man Trait. Once slotted this gives you +20 Fate. This is a passive Trait. -Rank 2 is available at level 29 -Defeat 100 Orcs
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Hobbit
Racial Accomplishments Enmity of the Wolves
Passive Skills
-Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 Wolves
Hobbit Courage—Improved resistance (+1%)
fear
Hobbit Toughness—Improved Vitality (+15)
-Reward is the Stoop for a Stone Trait, which gives you a low-damage ranged attack (throw a rock) -Rank 2 is available at level 19
Rapid out-of-combat (+1.0)
Recovery—Improved morale regeneration
Resist Corruption—Improved shadow mitigation (+1%)
-Defeat 100 Wolves -Reward is the Guile and Conviction Bonus, which gives you a 5% bonus to Spider's Guile and Eagle's Cry Fellowship maneuvers.
Small Size—Reduced Might (-8) -Rank 3 is available at level 25 Virtuous Hobbit—This gives you a +1 bonus to the following three Traits: Empathy, Honesty, Idealism.
-Defeat 150 Wolves -Reward is Hobbit Club-damage bonus. 2% to all one-handed and two-handed clubs. Enmity of the Spiders -Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 Spiders -Reward is Hobbit Stature (+20 Might) -Rank 2 is available at level 29 -Defeat 150 Spiders -Reward is Return to Michel Delving (A teleport to the Shire starting area. 1 hour
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide cooldown)
Passive Abilities
-Rank 3 is available at level 35 -Defeat 250 Spiders -Reward is Hobbit-resilience. (+1 hope for 10 min, 1 hour cooldown) Enmity of the Goblins
Diminishing of Mankind—Decreased Will (-8) Easily Inspired—Increased regeneration
morale
-Rank 1 is available at level 29
Gift of Men—Improved Fate (+15)
-Defeat 50 Goblins
Strong Men—Improved Might (+15)
-Reward is Hobbit Stealth. 30 minute cooldown. -Rank 2 is available at level 35
Virtuous Man—This gives you a +1 to the following three Traits: Justice, Confidence, Patience.
-Defeat 100 Goblins
Racial Accomplishments
-Reward is Hobbit-Silence. This is a Feign Death type ability that can be used once per hour. Combined with the Minstrel's Feign Death class ability at 38, you can have two different feign death abilities if you roll a Hobbit Minstrel.
Enmity of the Wargs -Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 wargs
Man
-Reward is the Man of the Fourth Age Trait. +20 Will -Rank 2 is available at level 29 -Defeat 150 wargs -Reward is the Return to Bree Trait. This is a teleport back to Bree. One hour cooldown. -Rank 3 is available at level 35 -Defeat 250 wargs
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide -Reward is the Duty-Bound Trait. This provides a temporary morale boost to your Fellowship. Enmity of the Dead -Rank 1 is available at level 13 -Defeat 50 wights -Reward is Upper-cut, a 22 damage melee attack. -Rank 2 is available at level 19 -Defeat 100 wights -Reward is Tactics and Might Trait, which gives you a 5% bonus to Stallion's Spirit and Ent's Strength Fellowship maneuvers. -Rank 3 is available at level 25 -Defeat 150 wights -Reward is Man Sword-damage Bonus, which is a 2% damage bonus if using a one-handed or two-handed sword. Enmity of Hillmen -Rank 1 is available at level 29. -Defeat 150 Hillmen -Reward is the Balance of Man Trait. 1+ bonus to Parry, Evade, and Block. -Rank 2 is available at level 35 -Defeat 250 Hillmen -Reward is the Strength of Morale Trait, which gives you a 3k morale self-heal once per hour.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Statistics Before you head out into the great wild in search of adventure and the slaying of mighty beasts, and long before you actually delve into any of those dark and scary dungeons or swing your weapon at one of the monsters within Middle Earth, you are going to want to know a little bit more about the basics of statistics and attributes and how they can affect your play and class. While you do get some slight stat bonuses as you level up, the majority of your increases will be coming from gear and Traits. Traits are a unique feature of LOTRO and while we will be covering them a little more in-depth later on in this guide, it's important to know that there are a few Minstrel-specific Traits which are rather vital to your role in a group setting, and an entirely different set which are far more useful in a solo setting. But before we get into all of that, you'll need to know a little bit about the system and how it works. LOTRO employs a simple percentage system. What that means is that you have a percent chance to resist, land a critical hit, land a critical heal, resist damage, and so on and so forth.
You have five basic stats in Lord of the Rings Online. Might, Agility, Vitality, Will, and Fate. Beyond that you have a variety of different attributes, such as damage reduction, resistances, and armor. You will be able to modify these numbers over time through gear and Traits and it will all directly affect how your Minstrel can handle certain encounters or group settings. The wonderful thing about LOTRO is how many different Traits you can acquire over time, allowing you the opportunity to change your resists and modifiers as frequently as you find the need, allowing for more diversity when approaching specific instances or mobs. Hitpoints in LOTRO are called Morale. Power is Power.
Hope and Dread Hope and Dread are two rather important "mood" modifiers that you will need to take into account. The easiest way to explain this is to think about Hope as being the extreme "good" side of things, and Dread as being the extreme "bad" side of things. Every time you enter into a fight against one of the boss mobs of an instance or dungeon of the game you will encounter Dread. Every time you are around a "good" character of the game's
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide story, or in an area where good is prevalent, you will encounter Hope. Certain classes can also give you Hope buffs, and you can get Hope from potions and other sources as well. Hope gives you several side effects -Increased Morale -Increased receptiveness to healing spells -Less damage taken from attacks -higher chance of landing an attack. Dread has the exact opposite.
Stats
- Might - Agility - Vitality - Will - Fate - Armor - Mitigation - Resistances - Abilities
-Decreased Morale
Might
-Less receptive to healing spells -More damage taken from attacks. -Lessens the chance of landing an attack -May occasionally seized by fear or unable to attack at all. That last part is probably the most important thing to note. In both cases, the higher the level of Hope or Dread, the higher the level of the effects. In extreme cases of Dread your character can find themselves reduced to the point of absolute cowering fear...meaning you will not be able to cast spells or move in any way.
Might is more of a melee class statistic, as it directly influences how often you block with a shield, parry an attack, and how much damage you do with a melee weapon. However it also reduces the amount of incoming common damage, which can be useful. Might is not a very valuable stat for the Minstrel, so you probably shouldn't worry about it that much.
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Agility Agility is more of a ranged class statistic. It directly influences the damage you deal with a ranged weapon, but it also increases your chance to land a critical hit on a mob, reduces your chance at missing when attacking with a melee or ranged weapon, and increases your ability to evade or parry incoming attacks. Again, this really isn't an extremely valuable stat for the Minstrel class, so you really don't need to worry about it.
Vitality Vitality is one of the most important statistics for every class in the game. Vitality increases your maximum morale, reduces the amount of incoming damage from shadow, fire, and frost, increases your morale regeneration in combat, and increases your wound, disease, and poison resists. In other games the healer classes did not always have to worry about morale, and if you are from one of those min/max games where your power pool is the only thing to worry about, you might want to reconsider. In LOTRO morale plays a huge part in every player's survivability at the higher levels of the
game. As I briefly mentioned above, Hope and Dread can directly modify your character's morale. In certain fights, like against the Balrog or Nazgul, you will encounter such high levels of Dread that your morale will be drastically reduced. In order to counter this is it is important to have a decent baseline morale value, along with some Hope buffs, to insure you do not die with one hit from a mob.
Will Will is another important statistic for the Minstrel. Firstly, it increases the size of your power pool. This is your second-most valuable statistic. I find it on equal level of importance with Vitality, although you will always have far more Will than Vitality simply because of the majority of gear and your stat increases per level as defaulted by the choice of the Minstrel class. It is also an important stat because it increases your chance to resist fear effects, including cowering from Dread. It also affects how much power you regenerate outside of combat.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Fate
Mitigation
Fate is another baseline stat for players across the board because it directly affects how quickly you regenerate power and morale in combat. This is another vital statistic for the Minstrel class. It also increases the chance for you to land a critical on certain morale-enhancing abilities, as well as increasing non-direct damage weapons effects such as damage-over-time.
Mitigation is more commonly referenced as damage reduction. There are several types of mitigation in LOTRO, and each reflect specific types of damage. -Common damage -Fire damage -Frost damage -Shadow damage Each of these types is represented in your Character box and shows up as a percentage. The higher the percentage the more you will resist those types of damage.
Armor Much like in other games, Armor reflects your armor class, or the difficulty the mobs have hitting you with their weapons. The higher the value, the harder you are to hit. However, as a minstrel, this is not going to be an area where you spend a lot of time worrying about.
Resistances Resistances play a vital role in LOTRO. The higher your percentage, the higher your chance to completely avoid or resist the entire affect. There are four types of resists. -Fear. Can be increased through Will -Wound. Can be increased through Vitality -Disease. Can be increased through Vitality.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide -Poison. Can be increased through Vitality.
Abilities Lastly, but not necessarily least, are the actual abilities that make up your character. -Melee crit. Your chance to land a critical hit on the mob with melee weapons and/or abilities. -Ranged crit. Your chance to land a ranged critical hit on a mob through the use of ranged weapons and/or abilities. -Tactical crit. This is your chance to land critical hits with special attacks and abilities. -Block. Your chance to completely block all incoming damage. You have to have a shield equipped for this to take effect. -Parry. Your ability to completely parry and avoid all incoming damage. -Evade. Your ability to evade and completely avoid all incoming damage.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Traits and Deeds: the Basics There are four different kinds of Traits in Lord of the Rings. Virtue traits, Class traits, Racial traits, and Legendary traits. Traits are earned by completing Deeds within the game. But what are traits? How do they affect you as a player? The easiest way to explain this is to think about traits as ways to further enhance your character's stats and abilities above and beyond gear. As you earn levels you gain additional slots in which you can place your traits. You can only have a limited number of traits slotted at level 50, so it's important to have as many as you can to maximize your choices. Traits can be slotted by visiting a Bard within any major city or outpost and paying a small coin fee. You may change traits at any time. So how do you get these traits? Well it depends on what kind of trait you are talking about, but most of them stem from the completion of Deeds.
Deeds Deeds are tasks which reward the character with titles, skills, or traits. These can range from completing a certain number of quests within an area, to exploring certain key locations within an area, to killing a specific number and type of mob within an area. There are several different types of Deeds within the game.
Class Deeds These Deeds are unlocked by using specific skills related to your class. From very early on some of your skills will start Deeds which track your use of a specific skill and reward you with a Class Trait after you have used that ability a specific number of times. There is a maximum number of times you may advance a particular skill each 24 hour period, which means that it sometimes takes a few days to a few weeks to earn some of your class Deeds.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Racial and Social Deeds
Region Deeds
Racial deeds are unlocked by slaughtering creatures which are particularly hated by your particular race. If you noticed the Racial Accomplishments portions of each Race section detailed further up in the guide you will see what these racial deeds are and how they work, as well as at what level they become available. Social deeds are one of the most fun within the game. These involve being the target of another player's emote, such as someone targeting you and using the /scold emote. After a certain number of times of this emote being used on you it will reward you with a title or special emote. As with other deeds, you can only increase these a certain number of times per day. In the case of the /scold emote, for example, your character will eventually earn the title "The Naughty". They are a great way to add a little flavor to your character! You can find a basic list of social deeds as well as the per-day limits at: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Soc ial_Deeds
Region deeds are deeds which can be completed in each region of the game. These can involve performing quests, exploring areas, or killing specific mobs. There is no limit to how many mobs, quests, or areas you can explore per day. Most of the time you will find yourself earning some of these deeds as you explore and quest within each region, as running the quest chains will naturally lead you to kill mobs, explore areas, and complete quests. However, if you are interested in fully maxing your character out you will want to full explore and fully complete each and every deed within an area. Most players find this easiest to accomplish by coming back once they reach level 50. For example, some of the exploration deeds require going into sections of full-group areas that your quests might not require. Sometimes getting a group to side-track into these remote corners can be a pain, so it's usually easiest to wait until the area is gray to you in order to complete these harder exploration deeds. Also with kill deeds, it is often easier to wait until you are higher in level and can come back and slaughter many of the creatures at one time, whereas when you are of the actual level you can only kill one or two at a time.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Traits
Class Traits
- Racial Traits - Class Traits - Legendary Traits - Virtue Traits
Racial Traits As detailed in the Racial section further up in the guide, these racial traits, which are rewarded through the completion of the racial deeds, are unique to each race in particular. The Virtuous traits, however, are based upon earning faction for your particular race through the specific Reputation Houses located in each starting area. It takes time to earn enough Reputation for your specific Virtuous Trait, so don't be surprised if you don't get this right away. You need to be Friendly with your race's faction in order to purchase this trait from the corresponding vendor.
Class traits are unique and specific to each class. These traits first become available at level 10, when you earn the Novice title. As with all of the other traits, these can only be earned through the successful completion of deeds. In specific, class deeds. Class traits provide the most specific and significant enhancement to your skills, and the widest array of abilities to tailor your character to your own preferred play style.
Legendary Traits Legendary traits are the hardest to acquire and are not available until level 39. They are class-specific. Each class has a different type of legendary trait. These are acquired through the collection of pages to create Books that are specific to each class. The final legendary trait is only available after completing the level 50 class quest.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide + Peace Power Regen
Virtue Traits
+ Magic Resistance Determination
Virtue traits are the most common. They are available to all classes and races across the board. Virtue traits stem from the completion of region deeds. The best part about the virtue traits is they are tiered. Each time you complete a region deed you will earn whatever trait is linked to that specific deed. Over time as you complete more region-specific deeds you will earn more ranks in those traits. So while you might only have rank one in a trait at level 10, by the time you get to level 50 and have cleared all the regions you can earn up to 8 different ranks of each type of trait. Each rank gives you a significantly increased bonus to your stats, depending on what type of trait it is.
+ Agility + Combat Morale Regen + Morale Discipline + Might + Disease Resistance + Melee Resistance Empathy + Armor + Fate + Fear Resistance Fidelity + Shadow Resistance
Charity
+ Vitality
+ Wound Resistance
+ Power
+ Ranged Resistance
Fortitude
+ Peace Power Regen
+ Peace Morale Regen
Confidence
+ Might
+ Fear Resistance
+ Disease Resistance
+ Will
Honesty
+ Peace Power Regen
+ Power
Compassionate
+ Armor
+ Ranged Resistance
+ Fate
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Honour
+ Wound resistance
+ Poison Resistance
+ Ranged Resistance
+ Shadow Resistance
Tolerant
+ Vitality
+ Magic Resistance
Idealism
+ agility
+ Fate
+ Combat Morale Regen
+ Fear Resistance
Valour
+ Will
+ Morale
Innocence
+ Peace Morale Regen
+ Melee Resistance
+ Might
+ Poison Resistance
Wisdom
+ Shadow Resistance
+ Will
Justice:
+ Peace Power Regen
+ Combat Morale Regen
+ Wound Resistance
+ Morale
Zeal
+ Peace Morale Regen
+ Disease Resistance
Loyalty
+ Melee Resistance
+ Vitality
+ Poison Resistance
+ Power + AC Merciful + Peace Power Regen + Magic Vulnerability + Agility Patience + Peace Power regen
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Virtue Traits by Grouping
Confidence +2: The Road to War --Angmar Confidence: Garth Agrewen --- Lone Lands
Charity
Confidence: Rath Teraig --- Ered Luin
Charity +2: Hero of Ered Luin [Final] --- Ered Luin Charity: Ally of Ered Luin --- Ered Luin Charity: Bree-Lands [Advanced] --- Bree-Lands
Quests
Confidence: Strongholds Exploration --North Downs Confidence: The Grimfens --- Lone Lands Confidence: Where Giants Dwell --Misty Mountains
Charity: Lone Lands Quests --- Lone Lands Charity: North Downs [Advanced] --- North Downs
Determination Determination: Barghest --- Bree-Lands
Quests
Determination: Crawler --- Trollshaws Determination: Slug --- The Shire
Compassionate Compassionate: Defender of Ered Luin [Advanced] --- Ered Luin
Determination: Snow-Beast --- Misty Mountains
Compassionate: Lone Lands Quests [Advanced] --- Lone Lands
Determination: Warg --- Angmar
Compassionate: Peril of the Mountains --- Misty Mountains
Determination: Wolf --- Ered Luin
Compassionate: The Bounder --- The Shire
Life
of
the
Determination: Warg --- North Downs
Determination: Evendim
Salamanders
---
Discipline
Compassionate: Pilgrim of Evendim [Quests] --- Evendim
Discipline: Bog Lurker --- Lone Lands Discipline: Hendroval --- Ered Luin
Compassionate: Wander of Evendim [Advanced - Quests] --- Evendim
Discipline: Sicklefly --- Bree-Lands Discipline: Troll --- Angmar
Confidence
Discipline: Wolf --- The Shire
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Discipline: Wolf --- Trollshaws Discipline : Tomb-Defenders (Brigands) --- Evendim Discipline: Beasts (Birds, Cave Claws etc) --- Rep Dungeon in Sarnur (Ered Luin)
Fidelity: Evendim
of
Evendim
---
Fortitude Fortitude: Bear --- Misty Mountains Fortitude: Bree-Lands Woodsman [old forest trees] --- Bree-Lands
Empathy
Fortitude: Giant --- Trollshaws
Empathy +2: Angmar Quests [Final] --- Angmar Empathy: Bree-Lands
Tombs
Bree-Lands
Quests
Fortitude: Harvest Sicklefly --- The Shire
---
Fortitude: Neekerbeeker --- Bree-Lands Fortitude: Troll --- North Downs
Empathy: North Downs Quests --North Downs
Fortitude: Warg --- Lone Lands
Empathy: Peril of the Mountains [Advanced] --- Misty Mountains
Fortitude: Orc --- Evendim
Empathy: The Life of the Bounder [Advanced] --- The Shire
Honesty: Craban --- Lone Lands
Fidelity Fidelity: Defenses of the Lone Lands --- Lone Lands Fidelity: Scouting the Dourhands --Ered Luin Fidelity: The Circle of Despair --Angmar Fidelity: The Road to Rivendell --Trollshaws
Honesty
Honesty: Troll --- Lone Lands Honesty: Wilds of Tal Exploration Deed --- Trollshaws
Honesty: Bilbo's Buttons Deed --- Misty Mountains (High Pass) Honesty: Goblin Town locations Deed --- Misty Mountains (High Pass) Honesty: The Forbidden Heights --Misty Mountains Honour
Fidelity: The Sights of Shire --- The Shire
Honour: Spider --- Bree-Lands Honour: Spider --- Lone Lands
Fidelity: Evendim
Ruins
of
Evendim
Bruinen
--Honour: Spider --- The Shire
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Honour: Uruk --- Angmar
Justice: Orc --- North Downs
Honour: Worm --- Misty Mountains
Justice: Warg --- Misty Mountains
Honour: Worm --- North Downs
Justice: Goblin --- Evendim
Honour: Giant --- Evendim
Justice: Dourhands --- Rep Dungeon in Sarnur (Erud Luin)
Idealism Idealism +2: Brave Deeds in the Wilderness [Final] --- Trollshaws Idealism: Angmar Quests [Advanced] --- Angmar
Loyalty Loyalty +2: Bree-Lands Quests [Final] --- Bree-Lands Loyalty: Angmar Quests --- Angmar
Idealism: Flowers of the old forest --Bree-Lands
Loyalty: Brave Deeds in the Wilderness [Advanced] --- Trollshaws
Idealism +2: Lone Lands Quests [Final] --- Lone Lands
Loyalty +2: North Downs Quests [Final] --- North Downs Mercy
Idealism: The History of the Dunedain --- Bree-Lands Innocence Innocence +2: Peril of the Mountains [Final] --- Misty Mountains
Mercy: Wight --- Lone Lands Mercy: Redeemer [the dead] --- North Downs Mercy: Wight --- Angmar
Innocence +2: The Life of the Bounder [Final] --- The Shire
Mercy: Wight --- Bree-Lands Mercy: Wight --- Trollshaws
Innocence: Brave Deeds Wilderness --- Trollshaws
in
the Mercy: Limrafn --- Evendim
Innocence: Warden of Evendim [Final - Quests] --- Evendim
Mercy: Wight --- Rep Dungeon (Haudh Iarchath) in Barrow Downs Patience
Justice Justice: Brigand --- The Shire
Patience: No Place for Spoiled Pie --The Shire
Justice: Angmarim --- Angmar Justice: Brigand --- Bree-Lands
Patience: Places of the Dwarves --- Ered Luin
Justice: Brigand --- Ered Luin
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Patience: Restoring the Quick Post --The Shire
Valour: Snow Trolls --- Rep Dungeon in Sarnur (Erud Luin) Wisdom
Patience: Ruins of Bree land --Bree-Lands
Wisdom: Elf Ruins --- Ered Luin
Patience: The Barrow Downs --Bree-Lands
Wisdom: High Passes of Mountains --- Misty Mountains
Patience: The Eastern Ruins --- North Downs
Wisdom: Lore of the Cardolan Prince --Bree-Lands
Patience: Evendim
Wilds
of
Evendim
---
Misty
Wisdom: The Old Forest --- Bree-Lands Wisdom: The Weathertop Exploration --- Lone Lands
Tolerance Tolerance: The Villages of the Earth Kin --- North Downs
Wisdom: The Western Ruins --- North Downs
Tolerant +2: Bastions of Hope --Angmar
Zeal Zeal: Giant --- Misty Mountains
Tolerant The Farms of Shire --- The Shire
Zeal: Goblin --- Ered Luin Zeal: Goblin --- North Downs
Tolerant: Ruins of Misty Mountains --Misty Mountains
Zeal: Orc --- Angmar
Tolerant: Ruins of Trollshaws --Trollshaws
Zeal: Spider --- Ered Luin Zeal: Troll --- Trollshaws
Valour Valour: Goblin --- Lone Lands Valour: Goblin --- The Shire
Zeal: Kergrims --- Evendim Zeal: Spider --- Rep Dungeon (Haudh Iarchath) in Barrow Downs
Valour: Orc --- Bree-Lands Valour: Orc --- Lone Lands Valour: Troll --- Misty Mountains Valour: Worm --- Angmar Valour: Worm --- Trollshaws
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Minstrel Class Deeds and Corresponding Traits Harmonious Melody. This ability gives you a longer window of opportunity in which to perform your next tier of ballads. +5.0 to effect duration and a Line Bonus of +0.3 to morale regen in-combat. You have to play 1,500 ballads to finish this deed and earn this trait. You may only advance this deed 500 times per day. Herald's Hammer. This gives you an enhanced version of your Herald's Strike. Adds 100% to your Herald's Strike. Also gives a Line Bonus of +50 to max morale. You must successfully land Herald's Strike 700 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. You may only advance this deed 240 times per day. Powerful Voice. Decreases the cost of your cries. Reduces the Power cost of all cries by 5%. Gives a Line Bonus of +65 max power. You must successfully use your cries 300 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. You may only advance this deed 100 times per day. Smooth Voice. This trait increases specific ballad effect durations. When slotted this turns your Ballad of Vigor and Ballad of Balance into songs that no
longer deal damage, but add bonus to the status of your group. Song of Vigor is a 30 second buff of +29 vitality. Song of Balance is a 2.6% evade chance increase for 30 sec. Both have a 15s cooldown. line bonus of +50 max morale. You must successfully use Piercing Cry 600 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. You may only advance this deed 200 times per day. Focused Performance. This trait increases the induction time of your abilities, making you harder to disrupt. 10% faster cast times on skills. Also a line bonus of 2% fear resist. This is one of the more important Minstrel traits. You must evade 300 attacks to finish this deed and earn this trait. Life Singer. This trait reduces the power cost for your morale-renewing skills (heals). 10% reduction from the power cost, as well as a line bonus of 0.3 to morale regeneration. You must use your healing spells 1,000 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. This is one of the more important Minstrel traits. You may only advance this deed 150 times per day. Unrelenting. When slotted this allows your Piercing Cry to stun enemies after a crit. It also reduces the recovery time on Piercing Cry and gives it a 25% additional chance to critical when slotted. Stun, plus line bonus of 50 to max morale. Also reduces 3.0 from the skill recovery time.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide You must successfully land critical hits with your Piercing Cry 100 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. You may only advance this deed 20 times per day.
traits. It reduces the threat generated by your skills by 25. It also gives you a line bonus of 65 to max power. You must use your Song of Soothing 300 times to finish this deed and earn this trait.
Graceful Demeanor. This trait enhances the effects of your Enlivening Grace and Rally! Abilities. It also subtracts 2.0 from the cast time on your resurrection spells. When slotted it reduces the cast time on Rally by 2 seconds and recovery time by 5 minutes. Line bonus is 2% fear resist, 20% to morale and 30% to power upon resurrection. Must use Enlivening Grace 100 times to finish this deed and earn this trait.
Battle-Hymn. This ability increases the regen rate while in-combat for the Anthem of the Valar. Line bonus of +65 to power. Must use Anthem of the Valar 250 times to finish this deed and unlock this trait.
Light in the Dark. This trait increases the damage for your Tier 1 and Tier 2 ballads. Adds a 10% bonus to your damage and a line bonus of 50 to max morale. You must use your Ballad of Resonance 1,000 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. You may only advance this deed 150 times per day. Silver Tongue. This ability allows your songs to recover more quickly than before by reducing the recharge time by 3.0. You also receive a line bonus of 2% to fear resist. You must use your Cry of the Chorus 500 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. Subtle Movements. This is another of the more important Minstrel-specific
Exemplar of Song. This is a title. There is no trait associated with it. Heralded Saviour. This ability increases the effectiveness of your Song of Aid. It lasts 10% longer and has a 20% increased recovery time. You also receive a line bonus of 2% to fear resist. You must use your Song of Aid 400 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. Mentor of Song. Title, no trait. Associated with mentoring players to use instruments. You can only mentor 1 instrument every 5 days. It takes 3 mentor sessions to earn this title. Strength of Voice. This increases the duration of your Tier 3 ballads by 10 seconds and gives a line bonus to moral regen in-combat by 0.3. You must use your Ballad of War 500 times to finish this deed and earn this trait. Melodies of the Valar. This deed gives you the Rally trait upon completion. This is a legendary trait. Rally is an in-combat
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide resurrection spell. You must gather 8 pages from the Melodies of the Valar book in order to complete this deed and earn this trait. The first four pages drop from Goblins in the Misty Mountains and the last four pages drop from Morroval in the Ram Duath. The Rising Chord. This deed gives you the Song of the Hopeful Heart song upon completion. This is a legendary trait. This song enables you to temporarily reduce the Dread of an area for 60 seconds. (Find info on where pages drop) Valour's Marches. This deed gives you the legendary trait Anthem of the Wizards. It allows you blast your enemies with an area-of-effect (AoE) that will slow anyone who is affected by it. Like all anthems, this can only be played after a Tier 3 ballad, and your counter will be reset. 30% movement rate reduced, 20% attack rate reduced. 30 second duration. (Need more info on pages)
Trait Builds The following details specific builds. Depending on the situation you will want to switch your traits around for maximized performance. You want to avoid all "all-in-one" build specifically because while it might enhance one area, it will sacrifice in another, and since this game is very clearly divided between solo and group play you need to make that distinction. For the most part you will leave your Virtue traits alone...you can keep the same ones for group and solo play slotted. The only ones you will be changing out with regularity is your Class traits. Furthermore you should make sure to pay attention to boss fights for specific areas. These will be the few times when you might change out your Virtue traits to get higher resists. The Rift, for example, can require high shadow and fear resists, so if you know what kind of boss fights you are going up against, you can change out your Virtue traits accordingly. But it is fairly rare that you need to worry about changing the Virtue ones around, and you don't have to if you really don't want to. For the most part you will want to stick with Virtue traits that increase your morale and vitality. Why vitality, and not wisdom
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide and fate, you ask? Because all of the Minstrel gear in the game will provide you with more than enough will and fate bonuses, but you still need to keep your morale as high as possible to counter the massive Dread de-buffs in boss encounters.
Solo Build The solo build is made up of primarily increased damage traits. You will be surprised at how much DPS the minstrel can do, especially in the upper 30's and to cap. Also keep in mind that since all of your trait slots will not become available until higher levels, some of the traits will not be available to you until higher levels.
Fellowship Build Your Virtue traits will remain the same, regardless if you are in Solo or Fellowship mode. However, your class traits are important. While you want a higher DPS mode when soloing or duoing or even in smaller groups, you absolutely want to switch out for performance-healing traits whenever you decide it's time to do an instance. Healing is, after all, your primary role, and as fun as it is to be able to DPS while playing this class, it's important to remember that doing so is your backup job. Focused Performance (this is the only trait which you will never move. Faster cast time is important regardless of solo or fellowship play).
Herald's Hammer.
Life-Singer.
Light in the Dark.
Harmonious Melody.
Unrelenting.
Battle-Hymn.
Focused Performance.
Glorious Anthem.
Silver Tongue.
Subtle Movements.
Powerful Voice. Also keep in mind that until the low-mid 40's one of your class trait slots will be taken up by the Medium Armor minstrel class trait. Once you get your first full set of light gear in Angmar you can replace that with any of the above.
Keep in mind that these are the most effective for long-term buffs, decreased aggro, and maximized healing.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Minstrel Basics Whether solo or in a fellowship, there a few things that make playing a minstrel far different than many of the other healers you might have played to-date. Firstly and foremost is the different tiers of ballads, songs, anthems and how they play into your heals. Second is instruments, and how they can affect the potency of your songs, ballads, anthems, and help you with your aggro. Thirdly is aggro itself. Aggro in LOTRO is different than in almost every other game. Heals generate a LOT of threat, and unless you are using the full extent of your abilities, you will be squashed like a little bug.
Instruments Instruments play a vital role in how the minstrel class is played. I keep a full set of instruments on me at all times, as each particular instrument gives a unique bonus that can come in handy depending on the situation. Instruments are crafted by the Woodworker class. Each tier of instrument gives you a better bonus, so try and replace your instruments with the next tier each time you ding 20, 30, 40,
and 50. Please note that there is a difference between the basic instruments that can be used to play in-game music and the crafted instruments which give unique minstrel-only bonuses. The crafted instruments start at level 20, whereas the basic instruments can be obtained at level 1 (although the skill to use them does not always start at level 1) Drums. Drums give you a +% to Ballad damage and +% to the Ballad cost. Flutes. Flutes reduce a % of the power cost on all Songs. Harps. Harps reduce a % of the power cost on all Ballads. Lutes. Lutes reduce a % of the power cost on all Anthems. Theorbo. This reduces the amount of thread you gain during combat. This is probably the most important instrument in your repertoire. As with all crafted items the higher the level the higher the % of the effects on the instruments. Critical versions of the instruments will give you further enhancement. The most common pair of instruments to be used is the Drum and the Theorbo. You can switch them during combat. Usually people keep the drum slotted most of the time to get a bonus to ballad damage, then switch over to the theorbo when they need to heal.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Ballads, Anthems, Tales and Songs: The Minstrel's Gallery Ballads are one of the unique features of Lord of the Rings Online and the Minstrel class. This is also where the strategy part of playing the minstrel comes into play. The easiest way to think about ballads is tiered abilities. A tier 1 ballad must be played in order for a tier 2 ballad to be played, and a tier 2 ballad must be played in order for a tier 3 ballad to be played. In most cases your strongest abilities will stem upon a prerequisite tier 2 or tier 3 ballad being in effect, especially with your anthems.
generate with each heal spell, which can be extremely useful in longer fights. Minstrels also have the ability to switch between "normal" mode and War-Speech mode. When you enter into War-Speech mode via the toggle, your heal spells are reduced by 50% effectiveness. However, your DPS is increased on specific abilities, and you will also gain some abilities that are only usable while in the War-Speech stance. It is important to remember that while some of your abilities gain strength in this stance, your heal abilities are cut in half, which means you have to pay closer attention to morale meters. Generally War-Speech is only used for solo play or if you are the second minstrel in a party, which rarely happens. I will cover this in more detail in the Solo and Group Combat areas.
Tales are your toggled buffs. You may only have one tale active at any given time. These are powerful tales of deeds long past, of glorious battles won to help strengthen your allies in times of need. Songs are generally direct-damage or instant-cast abilities, while Anthems are generally only opened after a tier 3 ballad has been performed. Anthems will give your fellowship the most beneficial abilities and in-combat buffs, like morale regeneration and extra resistances. However some of them can also do such things as reduce the amount of aggro you
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Combat as a Minstrel
your own, your War-Speech will help you transform into a battle-hardened veteran that any foe should tremble to face!
Middle Earth can be a dangerous place, whether you are all alone while traveling the wilds, or traveling with your boon companions in a fellowship. In either case, you are going to want to know how to best play your class in order to successfully work your way up to the top. The Minstrel is primarily a healer. But that doesn't mean that's all you do. Nor does it mean you are relegated to simply being a buff-bot and heal-bot. The minstrel in LOTRO is a unique class with a lot of different abilities, and many different ways they can be played while still maintaining that primary role as a healer. You can mez undead, you can fear evil mobs, you can feign death, you can rez in combat and out of combat...you are the backbone of any fellowship desiring to see the deepest and darkest depths of the game. But it's not just about fellowships. The minstrel class has one of the highest rates of survivability within Lord of the Rings Online. Unless you are just not paying attention to what you are doing it is virtually impossible to succumb to defeat. When you are out in the field on
The Basics Ballads, Tales, Songs, Anthems...you have a vast repertoire of skills at your command. But where to start! Life as a young minstrel can be a bit tough, but as with all things you will eventually grow, and as you grow you begin to take on multiple roles within the group or solo setting. When you are solo you are going to want to worry about your damage output, as well as keeping yourself alive. As detailed in the class traits section above there are several traits which can help you when it comes to soloing, specifically the Medium Armor trait, the Focused Performance trait, and the Unrelenting trait. Those three are the most important when it comes to your ability to rapidly defeat your enemies while at the same time retaining some form of dignity in terms of staying alive long enough to get the job done. Your instruments will also play a vital role in your abilities. While you cannot create macros in LOTRO to easily switch out instruments, you can manually do it or
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide simply add them to your hotbar so you can simply click a button and equip the correct one. Depending on the situation you can switch them out as you see fit, or you can just use one or two. It's also important to note that while you can use most of your songs and abilities while running you can NOT heal while moving! You must be standing still in order to properly heal you or your fellowship members. Healing will generate a LOT of aggro. And by a lot, I mean a LOT. You get several abilities, such as the Song of Soothing, which allow you to de-aggro mobs during combat. Be aware that you must use your de-aggro abilities when in a fellowship or you will find yourself in the frying pan. Aggro management in this game is not as simple as the guardian simply spamming his taunts and keeping the mob focused on him. It requires you focusing on using your de-aggro abilities as much as possible to make sure the mobs are focused in the right direction...away from you!
Things you should know Just because the primary role of the Minstrel is a healer, doesn't mean that it's your job to keep everyone at full health during the entire fight. It simply means that it's your job to keep everyone alive. Too many players have a misconception that it's your job to keep them at full health through the entire fight, and that's just silly. First of all it's murder on the tank if the healer is spam healing; he'll never keep aggro if you do that. It's always best to worry about getting your de-aggros off first, then worry about healing the party/tank. There's a rather interesting read over at the official LOTRO forums which talks about things other people should know about the minstrel. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread. php?t=33296
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Healing The minstrel can only heal effectively with no mobs on them, so everyone should be scrambling to get them off of you!
a general rule of thumb burglars and lore-masters will mez/stun mobs but in the case of you not having one of these classes available have someone pick it off with ranged weapons...a hunter will work just as well. It's easier to heal the hunter than it is to have to heal yourself.
Healing requires line of sight. You can't heal around corners, tents, buildings, etc. If you can't see the person getting ganked, you can't heal them. As mentioned before, while we can cast many of our other abilities while on the move, we cannot heal while moving. Everyone needs to stay close...because we can't be running around trying to heal everyone. If the minstrel is out of power, everyone needs to be prepared to heal themselves. To be honest, I've never ran out of power except on exceptionally hard boss fights. If you spec properly and take care to have decent gear, this should never be a problem. Any time we heal, loose mobs WILL aggro on us. In particular, ranged mobs seem to love the minstrel class. The bad thing is that ranged mobs aren't usually close enough for the tank to have established aggro on them, so even if you use Song of Soothing or one of your other de-aggro abilities, the mob is still going to be shooting you because no one else has established any aggro with it. As
Resurrection We can't do any until level 20. So tell everyone to stop asking! And even then, we can't rez in combat until we get the Rally trait, which is a legendary trait reward from one of the legendary deeds, as detailed in the Deeds and Traits section of this guide. Even then, Rally has a rather lengthy cooldown so it's only for emergencies. In the case of a party wipe the minstrel can attempt a feign death. If it succeeds then you have nothing to worry about...other than re-spawns. Please, for the love of all things holy and unholy, do not revive until your minstrel says you should. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to deal with people who don't pay attention and revive after a death before waiting to get a rez. It is not your job as a minstrel to have to tell people how to play, but if I'm with people I don't know that well I always remind them at the start of a group to wait for a
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide rez if they die. If they choose to revive instead of waiting for a rez, that's their problem, not yours.
Crowd Control We can mez undead for 30 seconds, but everyone needs to be on their toes and avoiding their AoE attacks. Any damage will break the mez. We can also lull mobs, which can make pulling a lot easier and reduce the need for rez and stuns. The less mobs that come, the easier the fight! We can fear mobs. The best part about fear in LOTRO is that unlike in other games a feared mob doesn't bring back everyone else in the zone. They won't bring back any. So you can generally fear mobs without worrying about adds.
Damage War-Speech. I've talked about this briefly but basically it's a toggled stance that you can enter into which allows you to do a lot more damage than usual, including some nice AoE damage, but your healing abilities are cut in half. This is NOT a good stance to be in for instance settings, unless you are a backup minstrel. As a general rule of thumb you'll only have 1 minstrel per fellowship but on occasion there will be 2. Make sure to go over it with the other minstrel first to see who will heal and who will go into War-Speech mode. War-Speech is particularly useful for solo grinding, especially as you get into your 30's and find yourself with several abilities in the stance. You can literally kill as fast as most of the other classes if you have the right gear and proper trait selection. It is also highly useful when in small groups doing outside quests that don't require a lot of healing. You will eventually be able to lay on some serious AoE damage with War-Speech active, which makes it particularly useful when grinding.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Minstrel 101 Nearly half of the time you spend in LOTRO will be spent working on quests by yourself. Nearly every quest chain in Lord of the Rings starts out as a solo quest but ends up with a fellowship quest as its finale. Of course, some people choose to bypass the fellowship content in its entirety and focus solely on working their way to level 50 without bothering to group or even worry about the group quests. There are valid points to be made on either side of the fence when it comes to soloing or grouping. In Lord of the Rings Online it is most effective to combine aspects of both in order to achieve the fastest route to level 50. However, it's double important to start with a solid foundation, and that's where we'll begin. Keep in mind that you will want to return to your trainer as often as possible. You earn Passive abilities every odd level (1,3,5, 7, 9, etc.) and Active abilities/skills at every even level (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc). Make it a habit to return to your trainer every 2 levels. It's best if you make this an even level so you can keep your active abilities topped off. For the most part your passive abilities, such as Block, or Evade, are self-explanatory. As such I won't be covering them as
explicitly as I will the active skills, but it's worth noting that you should train them every chance you get, as they do increase your chances of survival. There will be a more detailed explanation of each ability and its relevance to Solo, Group, or Raid styles of play later on in this guide, but for now this section details a basic list of your skills, when you get them, and what are the most effective ways to use them.
Basic Skills and Uses When you first start out as a baby minstrel you will find yourself with only a few skills to be equipped. Raise the Spirit, which is your basic fast-cast small heal, Ballad of Vigour, which is a tier 1 ballad that does damage and gives you some vitality, and Herald's Strike, which is a melee ability. It's not much, but it's the start of a much larger world for you. All of your ballads can be cast on the move, and they all act as ranged abilities, which makes it easy to pull mobs from a distance rather than having to run up to them. It also helps because you don't have to chase things down if they decide to flee. You can merely use your abilities and kill them in mid-flight.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide At level 2 you get another one of the foundation skills, Piercing Cry. This ability will become particularly useful later on, as your War-Speech will give it enhanced damage and reduced cooldown, and you can slot a trait which adds a stun every time you land a critical hit with your Cry. This is one of your highest damage abilities, so you should use it as often as possible for the fastest advancement.
damage. It's important to note that almost all of the tier 3 ballads are group buffs. Through your early days as a minstrel your tier 1 and tier 2 ballads will be specifically for damage and most commonly used for soloing, while in a fellowship setting you will be focused on stacking your ballads to unlock the tier 3 and Anthems as quickly as possible in order to maximize the damage output of your group and to unlock the more powerful group abilities.
At level 4 you gain the Ballad of Swiftness, which is your first tier 2 ballad and does some damage to the mob as well as giving you a bonus to your attack speed. You also get the Ballad of Steel, which is another tier 1 ballad that enhances your armor and does some damage.
Once you hit level 8 you gain another tier 1 ballad, the Ballad of Resonance. It gives an enhancement to Tactical damage. You also gain another tier 3 ballad, the Ballad of Unshakable Will. This gives your group a boost to their fear resists and is particularly useful on boss fights or areas where fear/dread are particularly bothersome.
At level 5 you gain the first of your Instrument abilities. These are passive abilities. You can use a lute from level 1, but at level 5 you can learn the flute, the harp, the clarinet, horns, and the cow-bell (which is basically useless; it's just fluff). Be aware that while some of these instruments can be crafted and add bonuses to your minstrel songs/ballads/abilities, some of them are pure fluff for playing music in-game. At level 6 you gain your first ballad, which also happens to fellowship buff, giving your fellowship an increase to their
tier 3 be a entire melee
Level 10 is when you get your first group heal, Inspire Fellows. This is one of the most important abilities you will ever get. It's also a major aggro puller, so while you should use it as often as necessary, be aware that the moment you let this baby fly, any loose mobs are going to make a beeline for you. You also gain the ability to use Drums. At level 12 you get Cry of the Valar, which is your fear spell. It only works on evil mobs. Certain animals will be immune as they don't necessarily fall under the "evil" category. Remember, feared mobs
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide don't bring adds in this game like in other games you might have played, so feel free to use this skill without worry. It's an extremely important part of your class, regardless if you are solo or group. Level 14 sees the first of your War-Speech abilities, Echoes of Battle. While this skill works even when you aren't in War-Speech stance, its effects are increased when you enter the stance. It is a basic damage-over-time with direct damage initially type ability. You also get the Ballad of Balance, which is a tier 2 ballad that increases your Evade chance. This ability is key in earning your Focused Performance class trait since you must evade 300 attacks for the deed to complete. The increased cast time from Focused Performance makes it one of the top 5 abilities you will want to worry about as a minstrel, so using the Ballad of Balance every chance you get is extremely important. It's not as viable in group combat as you won't be getting hit as much, but for solo play it's absolutely imperative. Once you hit level 15 you will gain the ability to use the Theorbo. At lower levels it's not as critical, but especially at the cap if you can get a critical success version of the Theorbo crafted for you by a Woodworker, it helps considerably with reducing your overall threat generation and aggro control.
At sixteen you get Noble Cause. This ability rocks in fellowships for those oh-crap situations because it causes your next 3 Herald's Strikes to do extra damage as well as returning part of that as morale to the fellowship. When you invoke this skill it resets the timer for Herald's Strike, even if it has already been used, and also allows you to use the next three Herald's Strikes without any cool-downs. This is particularly useful for those omfg-I'm-out-of-power moments when you need to keep your group topped off. Trigger Noble Cause, get in close enough for melee, and spam Herald's Strike three times in a row to get some group heals going. Level 18 is a big boost to your role as a team player. You get three rather important abilities. The first is your slow-cast single target big heal. This is your primary heal spell. You also get Song of Restoration, which is useful for removing some of the Dread of defeat. You also get your mez undead ability, which is another key skill in your multi-function world. It lasts for 30 seconds, and combined with your fear, gives you two different crowd control abilities to enhance your desirability in a fellowship. Twenty! This is another big step for the minstrel! War-Speech! This is when you first get the ability to switch stances into a
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide DPS stance vs. a healing stance. War-Speech is primarily used for solo play. It transforms many of your abilities into higher-damage abilities, as well as having some specific abilities you will get over time that can only be used when you are in the stance. War-Speech is not as effective through the 20's as it will be when you get into the 30's and 40's, but it still adds a much-needed bonus to your DPS. You also get Anthem of the Free People, which is a in-combat morale regen. It can only be used after a tier 3 ballad has been used so you have to stack ballads to unlock this ability in a combat setting. You also get your non-combat rez, Enlivening Grace. Level 22 gives you firstly the Tale of Heroism, which is your first toggle buff for the fellowship. This particular buff increases the Will and Fate of your entire fellowship. Depending on the situation you will use different Tales, but for the most part this is your primary buff. It increases power pool, regen, and the chance to critically land some abilities, which makes it a very good buff. You also get your second War-Speech ability, the Call of Orome. This is an AoE ability which can affect up to three different mobs and it has a rather fast refresh of 10 seconds, which makes it a viable soloing tool. It also reduces the mobs Light mitigation, which helps some of your other abilities do more damage against
mobs who have been struck by the Call. At level 24 you get Anthem of Compassion. This is one of your de-aggro abilities, but like the other Anthems it can ONLY be cast after you have used a tier 3 ballad, which means it takes time to stack your ballads and unlock this. For longer fights this is an extremely useful ability. Level 26 unlocks the Cry of the Chorus ability. This ability unlocks ALL tiers of ballads and Anthems at once. It has a rather lengthy cool-down so I usually reserve this for boss fights when I need to make sure I have a resist, regen, or de-aggro up before the fight starts. This is a highly useful skill in a group setting, and can often mean the difference between success and failure. You also get a Cure Fear spell, which is extremely handy in boss fights to remove deadly effects which can wipe your party or have other detrimental effects. Song of Soothing comes at level 28. This is by far the most important spell next to your heals. This is your main de-aggro spell. It can only be used while in combat and will only effect those mobs who are in combat. You won't be using this while soloing, and you don't always have to use it for smaller fights while in a fellowship, but if there are more than three or four elite mobs in your camp at the same time, always use this spell if you have the time to get it off before you cast a heal. If you
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide have to cast a heal before you use this spell you will likely get aggro but as soon as you get this Song off you will ditch aggro. However, someone has to have established some form of threat on the mobs or they won't go back to ignoring you. This is another one of those cases where people need to be on their toes. If a ranged mob is shooting you from beyond the tank's range of aggro he's still going to shoot you even if you land this spell on him unless someone else does something to him to establish another threat. Level 30 is a big level, and rather expensive to train as well. Firstly, you get Song of Aid, which unlocks all gated abilities for your fellowship as well as letting Lore-Masters use their Beacon of Hope more frequently/for less morale. You also get a large instant-heal group-heal that will heal a significant portion of your group's morale. This is an oh-crap heal because it has a 15 minute timer. It will also draw a HUGE amount of aggro so keep that in mind if you are planning to spring this beauty. You also get the first of your Mentor abilities, Horn and Clarinet. What this allows you to do is teach other players to play these instruments. None of the classes can learn all of the instruments that the minstrel can, and some of them like to know things for "fluff" reasons, and the only way to learn them is from a minstrel
who has the abilities. These are nothing more than fluff. You also gain access to the Scribe Stance, which allows you to change your Mentor skills into Scribe skills and create manuals to teach players instruments, rather than mentoring them in person. However it is much more taxing and puts a 10 day cooldown on all of your mentoring skills. It also requires a Blank Mentor Manual. At level 32 you get Tale of Battle. This is another buff, but instead of Will and Fate this one focuses on Vitality and Wound resistance. This is particularly useful for boss fights when you need a little extra hitpoints for the fellowship, but overall it is a backup buff that is purely situational. You also get Ballad of Flame. This is a tier 3 ballad which increases your fellowship's resistance to fire-based attacks. At level 34 you get a lull, Song of Distraction. Keep in mind this is just a lull, not a de-aggro. It works wonders in terms of making pulls a heck of a lot easier. You also get another War-Speech ability, Call of the Second Age. This is another AoE ability which strikes up to three targets and although the refresh timer on it is not as short as Call of Orome it does significantly more damage. This is yet another addition to your solo skills and as far as I'm concerned this is when the minstrel really steps it up a notch in terms of DPS. This
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide ability allows you to slaughter much faster, making it feel a lot less like a healer class and more like a hybrid. At level 36 you get Ballad of the Stout, which is a tier 2 ballad that gives a bump to all your resistances and also does some damage. You also get another fluff ability to mentor Cow-bells, which is a fluff instrument. 38 is another big level for the minstrel, because you get two rather important abilities here. The first is your Still as Death ability, which is a feign-death. To have this as a healer is just amazing. If you see a party wipe coming, just hit this spell and if it lands you are good to go to wait for the mobs to reset and then go about rezzing your group back into the fray. This is absolutely one of the top abilities for a minstrel in this game. You also get Chord of Salvation, which is an instant heal that heals a single target for a significant amount of morale. It also only has a thirty second cooldown, which makes it a valuable skill that should become part of your "core" skills. Level 40. Down to the last ten levels to the cap, and while you have established most of your core abilities by now, the really powerful abilities start here. You get Anthem of the Valar at this level, which is an AoE. Like all Anthems, you must have used a tier 3 ballad to unlock this ability for use.
At level 42 you get Lay of the Hammerhand. This is a really, really neat ability. When you toggle it on it allows you to take damage and instead of losing morale you will lose power points, effectively giving you two pools from which to draw your morale. This is a life-saving skill which can often times mean the difference between success and failure. When things start to get hot, you can toggle this skill on and give yourself a chance to recover. Stuns and knockdowns will interrupt the lay, however. It's also really great to use when you want to beat a hasty retreat from an area, or to "train" out rather than fight your way out. Simply pop this on and make sure your fellowship sticks close on your tail as you lead them out. Since you are in front everything will be hitting you, meaning your group can follow you to safety...provided you don't run out of power. At level 44 you get Tale of Warding. As with your other Tales, this is a toggled buff and you can only use one Tale at a time. This particular Tale increases the armor and Hope of your party. This can be particularly useful in the major boss fights of the game when every bit of Hope counts to counter the Dread meters in fights with mobs like the Nazgul or the Balrog. Extremely useful in specific situations.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide At level 46 you get Call to the Fellowship. This is another useful ability for boss fights or lengthy battles when Fellowship Maneuvers/Conjunctions are being used. It gives a 10% bonus to all healing and damage from fellowship skills. It's on a 10 minute timer and only lasts for 15 seconds so it's important to ONLY use this ability at the start of a conjunction to maximize performance. At level 48 you get Gift of the Hammerhand. This is a unique ability that can really help your main tank, or other people in dire need. It allows you to give a 10 second reprieve from damage to one of your fellowship members where every Common point of damage done to morale is instead taken from their power pool at a rate of 2 to 1. So for every Common point of morale damage they would lose 2 points of power instead. This has a 15 minute cooldown so it's usually used as a last-ditch ability or only on specific boss encounters. It is also extremely useful for those fights when your tank might be dealing with 4 or more mobs at any given time and you need time to get a de-aggro or some resists off before worrying about heals. It'll give you some to work your magic, although you sacrifice some of your power pool. If you've managed to get decent gear, however, this really won't be a problem.
At level 50 you get your last two abilities. Irresistible Melody is a fluff song...it basically causes any Free People (good guys) in its range to burst into dance. The second is Call to Greatness, which is on a 5 min timer and is a single-target buff. This ability affects each class specifically as follows: Call to Burglars: +15% damage to positional attack skills. Surprise Strike is recovered every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration. Call to Captains: Grants a defeat event. Grants the Battle-readied state every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration. Call to Champions: Grants a defeat event and 2 fervor. Grants 1 fervor every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration. Call to Guardians: +25% hate generation. Grants the Guardian's Ward effect every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration. Call to Hunters: -10% threat generation and +3 focus. Grants 2 focus every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration. Call to Lore-Masters: -3% chance for enemies to resist Blinding Flash. Recovers Blinding Flash every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration. Call to Minstrels: +10% to healing. Recovers Chord of Salvation every 5 seconds. This has a 15 second duration.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide At level 39 and 41 you can trait your Legendary traits, which have specific skills with them. There are several to choose from, but it's up to you which ones you use. Rally is your in-combat rez, Song of the Hopeful Heart is an AoE dread reduction fellowship buff. Anthem of the Wizards is a Light-based AoE damage Anthem. At level 50 you will earn the Fellowship's Heart skill from your class quest. This final ability is a group heal-over-time and it also removes any fear effects from the character. You must have your legendary traits slotted in order to use any of the skills that go along with them.
The Minstrel played Solo With the overview that you just read you should have a basic idea of how the skills work and at which levels you are going to get class-defining skills and abilities. But there's more to it than just knowing when and how your skills work. You need to know how to play the class effectively in each setting. In this portion we will cover the best tactics for solo play. There's two different variations of healing in LOTRO. Firstly is just straight
healing. That is, simply casting your heals and letting them do their basic job. But if you use Herald's Strike you add a temporary increase to the amount of morale each one of your heals does. What this means is that while straight-up healing can get the job done, it is far more effective to make sure you've landed a Herald's Strike before you toss a heal, because you will be healing for more morale but the same amount of power. It's all about efficiency. This goes double-so when you are in War-Speech, as your healing abilities will be cut by 50%. As a general rule you can kill a single normal mob at any point in time while in War-Speech and never have to cast a heal. You'll end up with about 50% morale left over at the end of the fight and you can toss a quick heal off before chasing after the next mob. It is virtually impossible to run out of power while soloing. It's a little slower when you first start out simply because you have a limited number of abilities, but as you grow in strength so does your DPS, and eventually you will be moving with a fairly rapid pace. War-Speech is by far the most important factor when it comes to soloing as a minstrel. As we've discussed before, many of your abilities are transformed when you enter into this stance, giving you much more DPS and additional abilities as well. But along with War-Speech is also
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide knowing which traits to have slotted to make sure you are as effective as possible. Seeing as how it's fairly cheap to change your traits around at the local Bard NPC, it's important to grab the right ones before heading out into the field. The traits you want to worry about when soloing are the ones that increase the damage of your songs, your abilities, and give you an overall boost to your DPS. Every little bit counts. In particular you want to try and get Herald's Hammer and Unrelenting completed as early on as you possibly can, because these two will help you a lot in your younger minstrel life. Focused Performance is also important, as it increases the speed of your skills. The faster you cast, the faster you do damage, the faster mobs die, the faster exp comes in, which ultimately means you level faster. Later on you will want to make sure you get your Silver Tongue and Light in the Dark traits, because they give you a reduced cast time on your songs and 10% bonus to your tier 1 ballads. Eventually you will also want to have your Anthem of the Wizards, which is one of your legendary traits, as it gives you yet another AoE to help you on your way up. It's also extremely important to have the Medium-Armor trait slotted from your level 15 class quest. Understandably it will take up one of your class trait slots
early on and as they don't come that quickly it can be a bit frustrating at the early levels but believe me, every little bit of armor counts. You will be going toe-to-toe with mobs for the most part because you cannot use your fear spell to kite mobs. While your fear is a very effective crowd control ability, it has zero usefulness as a kiting spell, because the moment any damage is done to the mob the fear will break and it will come running straight back to you. Since you will be going toe-to-toe with mobs, the easiest way to survive and work on some traits in your early years is to keep it simple. Some of the key traits you want rely on evading attacks and using your Herald's Strike, so it's important to use this to your advantage. Up until level 20 when you get War-Speech your soloing tactics are going to be a little different than they will be afterwards. Every fight you will want to start off with a Herald's Strike, followed up by a Piercing Cry. After that simply cycle through your ballads. Since there are timers associated with each tier and how long a tier will remain open before you need to re-do the cycle it's most effective to "bounce" the tiers back and forth. Use your Ballad of Vigour, then follow it up with Ballad of Swiftness. Use Piercing Cry as often as it pops as well as Herald's Strike. Usually you only need to do two
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide rotations to drop most mobs. Once level 14 opens up the Ballad of Balance you can change things up a bit and start off with any of your tier 1 ballads, then immediately get your Ballad of Balance up, since it will give you an evade bonus and help you get your Focused Performance trait as quickly as possible. Toss in Piercing Cry/Herald's Strike as often as they pop, and just keep cycling ballads until the mob is dead. I don't worry so much about Echoes of Battle (your DoT) until after War-Speech opens up, because until then the damage is kind of insignificant compared to what it is afterwards. Once you hit 20 and get your War-Stance you can start toggling the Echoes of Battle skill at the start of each fight for some meaty DoT damage. Piercing Cry will also have an increase to damage from being in War-Speech. As soon as you unlock Unrelenting, Piercing Cry becomes one of your key damage abilities while in War-Speech because it will stun + do some serious damage. When you hit 22 you can start using Call of Orome, which is your first Light-based AoE spell that is only usable while in the War-Speech stance. Here's where you can start making a noticeable change-up in your fights. Start off each fight with Echoes of Battle, Piercing Cry, and Call of Orome. With any luck those
3 combined will have dropped the mob to 50% of its health. You have a 10 second refresh on Call of Orome, which gives you time to get off a tier 1 ballad and a tier 2 ballad and Herald's Strike before it's refreshed. Usually by the time you use Call of Orome the second time the mob will be dead. Very fast, very effective. Toss a patch heal on yourself and on to the next! If you find yourself in a multiple-mob setting you should probably fear the second add for now. When you get into your 30's you will be able to more effectively AoE 2-3 mobs at a time, but until then you are rather limited on what you can do to more than just 1 mob, not to mention it's hard to get your ballads off when you are being hit all the time. So if you get more than 1, fear the adds as frequently as you can. It really does help. You will keep that tactic from level 22 all the way until level 34. This is when you get your second War-Speech ability, which is also another AoE attack, the Call of the Second Age. You also get your lull ability here, which can help you single-pull mobs more effectively when you need to. Once you hit 34 you can change things up. Still start off with Echoes of Battle, Piercing Cry, and Call of Orome, but you can also toss in Call of the Second Age. This usually drops the mob to lower than
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide half of its morale, and you can usually clean it up with a Herald's Hammer and a ballad or two. Extremely fast. Extremely deadly. In cases where multiple mobs are going just keep repeating your Calls as frequently as you can, making sure to keep Herald's Strike going as often as you can also in order to make sure to balance out that 50% reduced healing from War-Speech, just in case you need to toss a patch heal in there somewhere. Don't worry about trying to use your slow-heal...just use the instant patch-heal when necessary. The others are too slow. That's pretty much it for the solo format. Things will get a little easier when you get Still as Death, because you can sometimes recover from a crappy pull, but the minstrel is a highly survivable class that has quite the array of abilities. Used properly you can DPS just as effectively as some of the other classes while still maintaining your core role as a healer...you can just switch in and out as necessary.
The Minstrel in a Fellowship This is where your class really begins to shine. The majority of your skills, especially from level 40 to 50, focus on your role in the group—or fellowship as it is called in LOTRO—setting. Your main role will be that of a healer, but depending on the situation you may be called upon to crowd control mobs through either the use of your fear or your mez-undead spell. In terms of traits you are going to focus on those which increase the duration of your abilities, decrease the amount of power it costs to cast your heals, and those traits which transform your ordinary ballads into fellowship-wise buffs rather than only for yourself. In specific, Focused Performance is extremely important for its reduced casting time on abilities, making your heals cast faster with less chance of an interrupt being possible. The Life-Singer trait is also important because it gives you a 10% reduction to the power cost of all your heals. Smooth Voice is one of my favorites because it turns your Ballad of Vigour and Ballad of Balance into 30 second group buffs instead of damage-dealing self-buff spells. Subtle Movements is important because it further reduces the amount of hate you generate from abilities. Silver Tongue can
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide sometimes be a boon here as well, since it reduces the cooldown on your songs. You can of course arrange these as you see fit, but I find the most important to use in a group setting are Focused Performance (Which never leaves its slot. I have had this trait slotted since the day I got it and I will never remove it), Life-Singer, Smooth Voice, and Subtle-Movements. But depending on the situation you can use whatever you see fit to increase regeneration, the duration of your ballads, or any other combination that works. Another important feature of fellowship play is Conjunctions, or Fellowship Maneuvers. These are basically coordinated attacks that are triggered through critical hits and by specific abilities which some classes have that can open conjunctions. Guardians and Burglars can both trigger conjunctions, although the cooldowns are several minutes on each ability, which means they are usually best reserved for specific triggers on boss fights when the need arises. When you have broken the defenses of a mob if you have him targeted you will move right into the fellowship maneuver and you will see a "wheel" with the four colors representing each spoke of the wheel. If you don't have the proper mob targeted you will see the symbol for the
conjunction/fellowship maneuver pop up on your screen...it looks like a little bulls-eye. Once you click it you will be presented with a choice of four colors: red, blue, yellow, and green. At its very simplest red is for direct damage, yellow is damage-over-time, blue is power, and green is health. However, it's much more complex than that, and one of the crucial elements that can set apart a good group from a bad one. You see, different combinations can new you different types of fellowship maneuvers. Also, the more you have of one specific color the more benefit you will get from that type of effect. If your group does all blues, for example, depending on the number of players in your group you will get a variation of power increase along with side effects, all beneficial. It is important to know as many combinations as you can for particularly lengthy or challenging battles, as a conjunction at the proper time can mean the difference in success and failure. Some fights are actually challenging enough that a conjunction will literally mean the difference in winning or a party wipe. A basic list can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Fel lowship_Maneuvers Conjunctions only occur in fights with signature or higher difficulty encounters, and only when you are grouped with at
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide least one other player. You also must be level 12 or greater for a conjunction to work. It's important to note that for minstrels the fellowship maneuvers will automatically target the mob upon which the conjunction was triggered. This can sometimes be a pain as it will automatically move your target from that of the tank (or whoever you were healing) to the target of the fellowship maneuver, if you choose to click the bulls-eye and participate. Red, or Ent's Strength, deals direct common damage. As it increases in power, it naturally increases in damage and at the 6th level of power—that is, when all 6 players have contributed to the maneuver—it becomes an AoE attack what will hit anything within 10 meters. Blue, or Stallion's Spirit, restores power, but it's got a lot of really nice side effects depending on the level of strength. From the second level onwards it is a basic power "heal", but at the 5th level it summons a noble spirit to help you in battle and at the 6th level it will summon a greater noble spirit to aid you in battle. It is important to note that this spirit will act just like a pet set to "aggressive" stance, so avoid using this maneuver if there are any mobs within aggro range that you are trying to avoid pulling, because these mobs WILL chase them down and aggro them to your
group, which can be a pain in certain areas. Just be sure of the area when you are doing this. Blues are exceptionally useful against power-drain mobs and fights which take longer than normal to beat, as they will keep your power pool restored. Yellow is also known as Spider's Guile, and it is a basic damage over time with some direct damage as well. At the 5th and 6th levels it will apply a 15 second effect that damages the targets power pool and will slow down its power regen after the 15 seconds are up. Yellow maneuvers are extremely useful when fighting against enemies who heal themselves, particularly boss mobs. Yellow maneuvers will help cancel out any heals these boss mobs do, so it's important to remember. Green is known as Eagle's Cry, and it is a morale maneuver. From the 2nd level onward it's a basic fellowship-only AoE heal-over-time, but at the 5th level it also cures fear spells and at the 6th level it cures fears AND wounds. This can be really handy on those difficult fights where the bosses are tossing down wounds left and right and impairing your fellowship's ability to fight at its peak performance levels. As a general rule of thumb most blue and green abilities can be used from afar, but reds and yellows need to be done from within melee range of the mob in question,
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide unless of course you are a ranged type of fight or can do some type of ranged ability. If a red or yellow ability can be used via ranged attacks the colored icon within the conjunction wheel will have an arrow going through it, meaning that you can use that ability from a distance.
health and power meters topped off and let my group do what it's supposed to do...slaughter the enemies. There's a really good post on the official forums detailing color coding and straight/flush combos at http://forums.lotro.com/showpost.ph p?p=351682&postcount=2
Another important function of conjunctions is combinations and how they work. Certain combos such as pairs, flushes, or straights (of colors) will increase the maneuver's strength, but the damage dealt by red and yellow maneuvers remains associated with the player who selected those colors. Successful combos will strengthen the individual player's "maneuver" strength, while blue and green conjunctions gain an AoE in almost every combination, therefore benefiting every member of the fellowship.
Depending on the encounter at hand will depend on how you start. When you are lower level you have lesser variety in your songs and skills, but as a general rule with healing causing so much aggro in this game you will want to try and tailor that as much as possible. Remember, it's not your job to keep everyone at full morale. It's only your job to keep everyone alive. So don't sweat it if you are only keeping your lore-master or hunter hanging on by their toe-nails as long as your tank is still alive with the mobs focused on him. It's also not your primary roll to CC. If you have time, sure, but your primary role is keeping the group alive.
Since the damage from these conjunctions is based upon the person who triggered as well as the classes who do the damage it's a general rule of thumb to let the tank and DPS classes do red and yellow combinations and let the minstrel pick last. Your job will be determining whether or not to finish off with a green or blue, or whether or not you should help out with damage. I always find it best to toggle blues and greens at the end of combos in any non-boss fight to keep my fellowship's
Your first heal, Raise the Spirit, starts at level 1. This is your fast-cast, small heal spell. It's there all the way from level one to 50. Considering you won't be going up against anything horribly difficult in the first few levels, that's fine. You get your first group heal, Inspire Fellows, at level 10. You'll have a bit more to offer groups by this stage, both in terms of DPS (which is your secondary role) and healing itself. But level 18 is when you get Bolster
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Courage, which is your slow-cast big heal. This is your primary heal, and a good thing too because around level 20 is when the majority of quest lines start leading up to fellowship quests, meaning you'll need friends and you'll want to be on top of your game to insure everyone's survival. Up until level twenty most of your abilities will have been tier 1, 2, or 3 ballads. You'll have a fast-heal, a slow-heal, and a group heal. The progression is such that they set you up perfectly for what is about to come, and that is the core of playing a minstrel: learning how to tier-stack your abilities for maximum performance. And while it's not exactly a walk in the park, it's not that difficult as well. It simply requires paying attention to each encounter and adjusting accordingly. Your tier 3 ballads are all fellowship-affecting ballads, and they are also all necessary for the unlocking of your Anthems, which again give bonuses to the entire fellowship. What that means is you will need to be focusing on two things during fights: healing, and getting off tier 1 and tier 2 ballads to open up the tier 3's, all before the timers reset to zero and you have to start over again. You can do this by taking a close look at each encounter and judging accordingly. If you are fighting more than three or four
mobs with your fellowship then it's likely you will be focused on healing for the most part, but if you are in the middle of a two-foe encounter and you can see that your next battle is going to be against six, then you should prep for it. At level 20 you get your first Anthem, which is Anthem of the Free People's. This is particularly handy for those larger fights because it increases the morale regeneration of your fellowship, and it draws a LOT less aggro than a straight heal. It's a great way to keep your non-tanking members topped off while you are focusing on keeping the tank alive. At level 22 you will get your Tale of Heroism, which is your Fate and Will buff. This is your primary buff, as it increases everyone's power pool, power regen rate, and tactical crit percentages, all three of which are extremely important. You will get other tales as you level up, but this one will remain your primary. Anthem of Compassion comes at level 24. Seeing as how this is your first de-aggro ability, it's rather important. Whereas healing up to this stage has been more of a hope-my-tank-has-aggro type of situation, you now have more direct control over how the mobs react to your healing. Don't forget that Herald's Strike adds a bonus to your heals, also, because that plays an important role in how your fights work. As a general rule of thumb
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide you should always try and start each encounter with a Herald's Strike so your heals are doing their maximum benefit, but you won't always have that chance. For large fights in particular you will want to try and get off your tier 1 and tier 2 ballads as quickly as possible, toss a patch heal on the tank/whoever else needs it, then quickly get a tier 3 ballad up so you can toggle Anthem of Compassion. Once you do that you should be free to heal without being bothered, although any "free" mobs such as archers who might not have been close enough to the tank for aggro management may end up being focused on you regardless. Depending on the situation you can ignore these or deal with them yourself. Ideally you have the burglar or lore-master CC them, but in the case you are lacking just have the hunter DPS them until he gets aggro on himself. It's far easier to heal the hunter than it is yourself, and it keeps that mob occupied while you heal. Failing that, you can always try and snap a fear (or undead mez, depending on the fight) off and give you a reprieve.
fights that might require extra resists or you needing your Anthem of Compassion up before the mobs are pulled. It should be reserved for major battles.
At level 26 you get Cry of the Chorus. This has a rather lengthy refresh timer but it's an important ability for major boss fights. It unlocks all tiers of ballads and anthems at once, which gives you access to all of your abilities at the same time. This is particularly useful for those
You get an instant-heal group-heal at 30, Triumphant Spirit. It's on a 15 minute timer so this is an oh-crap spell. Still, it can come in handy. You get Tale of Battle at 32 as well as Ballad of Flame, which is another t3 ballad with fire resists, useful
At level 28 things change for you. You get Song of Soothing. This is one of the most useful abilities you will get in your entire career as a minstrel. It's got a short refresh timer so you can use it frequently, and it affects ALL mobs in an encounter, so long as they are actively in combat. It's a rather long cast time, but this ability should be the first or second you get off at the start of ALL of your fights. It also eventually unlocks Subtle Movements, which is a trait to further increase your aggro reduction by 25%, and is one of the traits I mentioned at the start of the fellowship section of playing the minstrel. Sometimes you will have to get a heal off on the tank before you use Song of Soothing, but that usually only has a couple of mobs focused on you for as long as it takes to get the ability off. If you can, use this ability first, right off the bat. Just pay attention to whether or not your tank can afford a few moments without you focused on him.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide for those fights against fire mobs (drakes, etc.). At 34 you get Song of Distraction. This is a good ability to use in order to help your puller get as few adds as possible. It only works on one mob, but it lulls them into distraction, allowing you to pull their friend(s) without noticing. Sometimes a properly lulled mob can mean the difference between two or three mobs in camp, or a whole lot more. It's a non-combat lull, not a de-aggro. Once you hit 38 you get your feign death (Still as Death) and your Chord of Salvation, which is an instant-cast big heal on a 30 second timer. Combined with your Bolster Courage, you now have two main heals, and a whole slew of others, to keep your party alive. Still as Death should be used sparingly...only in dire situations. I don't recommend trying to use this as a de-aggro ability because you already have several other ways of doing so. This is a backup in case of a party wipe.
the fellowship alive so you can all move on to the next encounter without any downtime. But you also have to worry about resists, fears, crowd-control, and many other elements depending on the situation. Playing a minstrel means you have a vital role to play in the fellowship. I would argue that the minstrel is the most important class in a group. You can sometimes get away without a real tank, and sometimes without a crowd-control class, or sometimes without a hunter, but no group goes anywhere without a healer. The life of a minstrel is blessed in that you will always find parties willing to bring you on board.
If you take a look at the abilities from 40 to 50 you will see a lot of fellowship-affecting skills that are situational. Depending on the situation you may find some more useful than others. For the most part playing in a fellowship remains the same from level one to level fifty. Keep your head down and try not to get hit, and keep the rest of
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
A Guide to Middle Earth Middle Earth is a vast realm of ever-changing landscapes and difficulty. So vast that at times you might find yourself wondering...where do I go from here? Each race has its own unique starting area. The first time you play any given race the starting area is mandatory. You are given the option to skip the intro quests and area the next time you make a character of that race, if you so choose. However, it's an easy way to get your first 6 levels and starter gear. If you choose to skip an intro it will dump you into the "real" world at level 2, with no gear, no coin, and unless you have a set of gear ready to twink yourself with, no way to get started in Middle Earth. Lord of the Rings Online is a fairly linear game. Unlike other MMORPGs on the market this is a storyline-based game. This is a double-edged sword. For one, it means that you will never have to go looking for things to do; a linear game leads you along on a fairly straight-forward path. The downside to this is that you do not have nearly as large of a "sandbox" feel as you do in other games. Yes, you can go anywhere
you want and do whatever quest chains you like, but you will miss out on a significant portion of the game if you bypass the linear progression. The starter areas need no walkthrough introduction because they are extremely easy and self-explanatory. Remember to keep the tutorial hints on as they will provide you with further details on game-specific information that can help guide you on your way to surviving in Middle Earth. Depending on the race that you choose for your minstrel depends on the starting area and the storyline that you will play through. I recommend trying each racial starting area as a final determining factor in picking the race for your minstrel, above and beyond stats, simply because each race has such a unique storyline that it can affect some player's enjoyment of the class they will be playing. The writers for LOTRO have done an exceptional job with transferring Tolkien's world from page to the digital world. Why not experience as much of it as possible? And with each introductory area having such a rich backdrop and wealth of information, it helps set the tone for how the rest of the game will unfold, and will also help you understand the story you are about to begin to be a part of. Once you are done with the Intro areas you will be dropped into your relative starting area. Men start in Archet which is
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide part of the Bree region. Dwarves start in Thorin's Hall, and Elves start in Celondim, both of which are in the Erud Luin region. Hobbits start in Michel Delving, which is in the Shire region. The absolute first step you should take before you do anything is find a dynamic map to help you in your travels. Arguably the most popular is found at www.mehq.net and is a player-ran map with player-input points-of-interest. You can sort the maps by region and using the drop-down menu at the top quickly and easily locate POIs on the map. This will help you avoid ever getting lost or needing to wait for someone to give you help as to where or how to find something. With this map at your disposal you will very literally never get lost. It has every single quest POI for every region, so if you find yourself sorting through your quest journal going "hmm, where do I find that backpack full of ore I'm supposed to pick up for this quest?" you can simply tab out of the game, bring up the map of the region you need to be in, look for "backpack" in the drop-down menu and it will show you exactly where you need to be. The second most valuable tool is the database found over at http://lotro.mmodb.com/. Between this database and the dynamic map you will never find yourself lost or confused
about a quest. I keep both of these open at all times in the background so if I run into an issue I can simply alt+tab out and verify. Each region has specific deeds which can be accomplished through questing, killing, or exploring. There are two ways to go about this. If you want to get to 50 as fast as possible, worry about doing deeds after you hit the cap. You can come back when the mobs are gray and easily get the exploration deeds while slaughtering mobs for the kill deeds that you want to obtain. Quest deeds you usually end up completing as you level up, because you will be completing more than enough quests in each area for the most part. Using the list provided within this guide you can determine which deeds are going to be best for how you plan on playing your minstrel. Alternatively you may choose to obtain each deed that you want to pursue while you are leveling up. Some perfectionists find this the only acceptable way to do things as it helps maximize the strength of your class as you level up. However, it detracts from the speed of leveling, so it is a choice you have to make for yourself. If your priority is getting to 50 as quickly as possible and then worrying about deeds for traits, then come back later. If you absolutely can't live without those traits, then do them as you go along. The
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide dynamic map will help you locate POIs for both the exploration and some of the quest deeds, while the kill deeds simply require finding specific mobs and slaughtering them until you are finished. Since LOTRO is such a dynamic game they have made it exceptional easy to level up in this game. One rule of thumb is important to remember: do quests in order of their level. The writers have done a stellar job of avoiding quests that force you go to an area for a quest, then return only to find yourself heading back to that area for another quest a level later, only to return again even later on. This will still happen in some cases, but for the most part if you do quests in the order of levels (not necessarily the order in which you obtained them) then you will minimize your running around. In some cases you will even end up knocking out several birds with one stone. Especially in the higher level areas you can sometimes find yourself going into an area and completing 5 or more quests just by killing mobs of one or two specific types, which is really great on the experience points. Your quest tracker shows quests by level and region so it is very easy to keep track of things. Establishing friends is also a good idea, and finding a good Kinship (or guild) is even better. You can use the official LOTRO forums to find guilds
who are recruiting on your server, or keep an eye out in the various channels for guilds who might be recruiting. Often times you will find yourself completing solo quest chains that have followup quests that lead into fellowship (group) quests that can only be completed with friends. It is also important to note that some quests within your tracker will be ranked as "small" fellowship quests, while others will be ranked with "full" fellowship icons. The difference is the size of the icon representing other players attached to the quest itself within your tracker. As a general rule of thumb small fellowship quests can be completed with 2-3 players, depending on the class. Some normal fellowship quests can be done with 2-3 players as well, provided they are the right classes and depending on the area. Others, however, will require a full fellowship to complete, as well as a significantly larger period of time to complete. It's also important to note that while soloing can be the most effective way to maximize your exp-per-kill from mobs, the majority of your experience points will come from quest completions, not grinding mobs. As such if you can find one or two people to make friends with and level up with as a team you will find the experience that much more rewarding. Also with a duo or trio you will rarely have to wait to find a group for the smaller fellowship quests since you will already
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide have one! Gear is not as important in LOTRO as it was and is in other games. For example, there are several tiers of gear. Common (white), Uncommon (yellow), Rare (purple), and Epic (teal). While in other games there is usually a huge gap between the tiers, in LOTRO there is not. Yes, there is a difference in Uncommon and Epic, for example, but it's not so huge as to make content impossible were you to only have Uncommon. The developers of this game want gear to be more of a choice than a mandatory end-all-be-all focus of the game. This is NOT a gear-centric game. This is a story-centric game, and while gear is all well and good and shinies are fun to get, it is not the primary focus of this game. A person wearing quested gear or crafted gear, for example, can still win the same encounters as a player wearing Epic gear from the instance sets or boss drops. The only difference is in the set bonuses and some slightly-higher stats. This is not to say that gear does not have an impact; it can, and does. The better your gear the easier it is to defeat a foe, but unlike other games where some fights or areas are impossible without the proper "tier" of gear, there is no such thing in this game. All players can accomplish all content regardless of their gear. Teal sets simply have the highest value of stats compared to the others, but the disparity
is not so much that Epic items are godly when compared to Rare or Crafted. They are simply slightly better. The best gear also comes from the instances and full-fellowship quests, as well as the end of larger quest chains. Instances is by far the easiest way to earn gear on the way up, although crafted gear can be equal in stats. However, gathering enough resources to make your own armor can be a pain. If you can find crafters who are willing to use your mats to craft you armor, this is another excellent way to gear up, although I find questing the fastest, most effective way to get gear. At the cap there are several full sets of gear which offer bonuses for wearing the full set, or several specific pieces. The more you wear of a set, the more bonuses you get. We will cover that later on in the gear section, but it is something to remember. If straight-up leveling is your priority, then your best bet is to rely on quests and instances for your gear. It's free, requires no mats, no combines, and simply requires the time and help of a few friends in order to acquire.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Crafting There are several choices when it comes to crafting, although you don't have to pick up a trade if you have no desire to. Each specific vocation is made up of three professions. A basic overview of the choices can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Cra fting. The Explorer is most often the logical choice for the Minstrel, because you gain Tailoring as a crafting class, along with Prospector and Forester, the skills which allow you to mine ore and harvest wood. Since hides drop from monsters that you kill (bears, wolves, wargs, boards, etc.), choosing this vocation is usually the wisest course of action if you want a fast-track to plenty of coin along with making your own armor. Ore and wood are arguably two of the easiest ways to make money in this game, and considering you pass by nodes aplenty during the course of your adventures, it is a best-choice for making sure you have coin for a horse at level 35 and plenty of coin to spare when you hit 50. Each profession is broken up into tiers, which is also explained in greater detail at the wiki, but the basic concept is you must reach at least a certain number of points within a previous tier to unlock
the next tier. For harvesting this means you must harvest the ore, wood, or hides and then refine them in order to earn points. Eventually you will earn enough points to unlock the next tier and can then harvest those nodes as well as refine them. Once you have achieved the full amount of points within a tier you have a chance to "critical" or critically succeed when refining the resources, which will give you x3 instead of just x1 of the particular resource. In crafting it works similar, but the difference is that each tier is broken up into two phases. The first phase is spent earning enough points by making items to reach the point where you would unlock the next tier. Once you reach that point you will be given a quest. You cannot advance to the next tier until you finish the quest. Once you finish the quest you have the option to master the previous tier. Mastering the previous tier allows you to critically succeed on items, which gives a substantial bonus to the stats of those items. Various dropped items, crafted scrolls, and even crafting tools made by a Metalsmith, can give you bonus to the chance you have to critically succeed on an item. While not as important at lower levels, they become increasingly valuable as you reach the cap, as many players find the crafted gear to be on-par with the
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide drops from instances. As such, critically crafted gear can be well worth the time invested.
NW portion of the Shire. Make large circuits, staying within the bog. You will also find plenty of Rowan wood.
Choosing a vocation is entirely up to you. The Explorer is possibly one of the best when it comes to the Minstrel class, although the others can help as well. Woodsman, for example, would allow you to craft your own instruments, but would not allow you to mine ore, which is one of the easiest ways to earn coin in the game.
For Barrow-Iron, Silver, and Ash, you have two choices, both of which are in Bree. You can either make circuits around the Barrow Downs or you can head north to the Bree Fields and make large circuits along the northern ravine edge, all the way to Trestlebridge and then back.
Resource Farming Regardless if you are farming ore and wood for cash or for your own crafting, there are several routes through each area that will warrant you the best amount of ore and wood. Hides are a different matter entirely. Between ore and wood, ore is the more valuable. If you chose the Explorer craft the best thing to do is track ore instead of wood nodes, because where there is ore, there is usually wood. As a general rule of thumb you can farm 3 stacks of ore and 1 stack of wood per hour, or vice versa depending on which you choose to track. For the first tier of ore, which is Tin and Copper, head to the swamp in the
For Rich Iron, Gold, and Yew wood the best choice is both west and east of Esteldin in the North Downs, as well as north of Othrikar in the same zone. Just make large circuits and you will find plenty of resources. For Dwarf-Iron, Platinum, and Lebethron wood you can make what is known as the Evendim (also dubbed Everswim because of the large lake in the western area of the zone) lake run, which consists of heading to the western edge of the lake and making a large circle of the land there. You can also find it in plenty all over the Trollshaws, especially the wooded areas. Ancient Iron, Ancient Silver, and Black Ash wood can be found in any of the 40-50 zones. There are no specific routes that are the "best", persay, because the nodes are found in plentiful array all over the place. Just be sure to harvest all that you see.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Hides drop from creatures. If you are farming for hides your best bet is to find an area thick with bears, wolves and boars (or similar) and start slaughtering. As a general rule you can farm hides while farming other resources, as the areas you will be making circuits through will have plenty of wildlife along the way. If you use the aforementioned routes you can easily earn 2-3 stacks of ore + 1-2 stacks of wood + 2-3 stacks of hides per hour. It slows down a little towards the higher tiers as you will be sometimes fighting mobs that take slightly longer to kill, but you still manage to rack up tons of resources.
Leveling As stated before, each race has a specific introduction into how their race fits into Middle Earth. Each intro area has a distinctly different feel. The first 6 levels are done in these introduction areas. You cannot accept kin invites during this phase, nor will you come across any other players. These instances are "tutorial" instances for all intents and purposes. They do, however, give you some starter gear, coins, and the ability to get to level 6 before they dump you into the real world.
These introduction areas also introduce you to the concept of the Book quests. The Book quests are epic quest lines that coincide with the actual Tolkien storyline that the Fellowship is processing through. At various points in time you will be assisting the Fellowship, or members of it, through these Book quests. Each Book has a series of chapters. When you first get done with the Intro area you will have a quest line in your tracker that falls under the Prologue area. This is the "main" storyline. While there are literally hundreds of quests throughout Middle Earth, and you are in no way required to complete the Book quests to level up to the cap, these Book quests lead you into many scripted instances, major plot and story-advancing areas, and overall contain some of the best gear and the funnest content of the game. You absolutely want to do these quest lines in coordination with your other quests. After the intro, as we mentioned above, you are dropped into your starter area. The first thing you want to do is find a Milestone and use it. You will have been given a Map at the end of the Introduction. This map allows you to recall back to your "bind" point, which is any Milestone you choose to set your bind point to. Since you will be spending till around your mid teens in these areas, use the Milestone that is most centrally located for you. You can change your bind point at any given time
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide by using a Milestone. Certain outposts along the way will have bankers and trainers so you will find it worthwhile to change things as you progress. You also should find the nearest Stable-Master and "unlock" his stable by clicking him. This will allow you to ride a horse to this location in the future. If you do not unlock the location you cannot ride to the location from somewhere else. Always remember to talk with your local Stable-Master when first arriving in an area. While crafting is not something everyone wants to get into, it is important to at the very least have some form of gathering skill for making money. Mining, or Prospecting, is a guaranteed money-maker, and considering you will need 4 gold 220 silver for your horse at level 35, you will want to have some form of alternative income other than just quests and vendor trash. There are several paths to choose from, so take the time to look them over. Prospecting is the best paying, although you will get plenty of hides from killing mobs (used by tailors) and if you go with Explorer, you can mine ore and wood at the same time, plus gather hides from killing, which means you are able to gather three different types of components at the same time, which equals lots of money!
If you start as an Elf, you will set your Milestone to Celondim. If you are a Dwarf you will set it to Thorin's Hall. If you are a Man you will set it to Archet. If you are a Hobbit you will set yours to Michel Delving. The starting areas are very linear, and require little/no effort. They will introduce you to the world of Middle Earth and start you down the path that will begin to draw you into the conflict that is affecting all of the Free People. While you will get a quest from each starting area to head to Bree, don't head out just yet. It's worth your time to finish all of the quests in the starter areas, as it will get you to level 15 or 16. Keep in mind also that green and low-blue quests are still worthwhile to complete because the quest exp is still good enough to make it faster than grinding mobs. NEVER grind mobs in LOTRO for exp. It is unproductive and a waste of time. Always quest. If you don't have a quest for a mob, leave it alone. You will waste your time if you bother with it. The starter areas will get you equipped in some better gear, give you your starter quests, introduce you to how the game works, and involve you in a few fellowship quests which will allow you to start playing your class in a group setting from time to time. All roads lead to Bree, however, so once you wrap up the quests in your starter area and progress the
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Prologue quest to the point where they tell you to seek out Strider in the Prancing Pony, it's time to head out to Bree. You can either travel by foot, or you can take a Mount from the local Stable-Master and quick-travel for 1 silver to Bree. You can only quick-travel from your starter areas to Bree.
Reputation Reputation is another factor of Lord of the Rings Online. There are several different Reputation systems throughout Middle Earth. Each race has an associated faction they can earn Reputation with, as well as certain areas throughout the game which have a faction associated with them. As you earn ranks within the Reputation system it allows you access to special vendors who have unique items, abilities, and other sundries which you can purchase from them if you have the corresponding level of Reputation. A detailed list can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Rep utation
(15-18) Bree Land Ah, the lovely little village of Bree. Centrally located just north and east of the Shire, Bree is a haven for all of the races. It is also the central hub for quite some time. As soon as you get to Bree set your Milestone to the one in front of The Prancing Pony. There is a Bard inside, as well as a minstrel trainer, so you will want to use this as your headquarters for awhile. There are two stable-masters in Bree. One at the west gates and one at the south-eastern gates, down by the Auction Hall. After you've set your bind point and gotten your horse points, go inside the Pony and advance the Prologue quest into the first Book quest. Strider will send you on a series of errands that are very easy and straight-forward. You can easily run the first few up to chapter 9 at level 15. Once at chapter 9 you will probably need to wait a couple of levels, or find help. Chapter 11 will require a full-group. Once you have run those quests as far as you can for your level, head back to Bree and simply make a rotation around the city, picking up every quest that you can find. You will notice that you get a couple of quests to run to the Lone Lands as well as some instance quests for the Great Barrows. Ignore these quests for now. The
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Great Barrows should not be attempted until you are around level 24, and only with a full fellowship. The Lone Lands you can wait to do until you are level 19 or 20. Most of the Bree quests can be done solo, although a few lead to fellowship quests. If you are in a hurry you can blow off the fellowship quests, but I suggest at least trying to get groups for them as you find them, because the exp and rewards generally make it worth it. Plus you'll need all the coin you can get on your way up the ladder. Once you have made your rotation around Bree, you can start running the quests, in order of their level. As linear as things are, it's fairly straight-forward and easy enough to simply grind your way from 15 to around 18-19 in a matter of just a few hours. There is also a small camp west of Bree, along the road, called Aldo's camp. You will pass through it on one of the chapters of the first Book quest-line. While the quests here are lower level, you can do them if you find yourself bypassing the Fellowship content of Bree lands. The same applies for the Buckland quests, as they are lower level. Even so, they give decent xp and are worth looking at if you are simply looking to grind the fastest way up the levels and bypass the group content as much as
possible. The Old Forest can be a pain, and you'll have to go in there for several quests, both now and later on in the game. There is an excellent map to be found at http://community.codemasters.com/fo rum/showthread.php?t=191870 which gives you a very clear picture of how to navigate the Old Forest, which helps alleviate any headaches due to the maze-like environment. Do all of the quests you find in Bree. Most of the chains will end up in either small fellowship or full fellowship quests. I don't recommend spending an inordinate amount of time looking for a fellowship. Just keep your eye out for other players, and ask around in the LFF channel from time to time, or if you are in a Kinship ask them. But if you can't find the help you need within a night or two, bypass them. It's much quicker to just keep moving forward on the solo quests than wait around for a fellowship that may or may not ever happen. Remember those quests that wanted you to head to the Lone Lands? Now's the time to worry about them. Don't worry about the run to Trestlebridge just yet...that's for later on.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
(18-22) Lone Lands Once you have hit 18/19, it's time to move out to the initial Lone Lands quest hub, the Forsaken Inn. This will be your base of operations for the next couple of levels, but I would not change my bind point from Bree just yet, as there are no trainers in the Lone Lands. Firstly, pick up all of the quests in the Inn and outside of it. You'll want to do all of the initial steps because they all lead up to chains, and several of them require you to run back to Bree. Ignore the quest that requires you to run to Ost Guruth. You'll want to do this quest later, as it's the next quest hub. My recommendation is to stay here until you level 20, ignoring any quests that have you return to Bree just yet. Wrap up as many chains as you can to get you to level 20, then recall back to Bree to train. You will have a few quests to turn in, as well as one followup that you need to do before you head back to the Inn, which requires you to kill some wolves in the mountains. Once you get back to the Inn, finish all of the chains you can, up to the Fellowship quests. At this point you can either sit around and wait for a fellowship, or you can move to the next town, Ost Guruth.
Once you get to OG, you can begin again with the quest chains. If you are careful you can easily get to 22 or 23 here before you need to worry about a different area. Once you get to the point you are left with only fellowship quests or orange/red quests, you will want to head to Trestlebridge for the first few chains there. Also you will have a quest in the low 20's to run to a small area north of the Shire. There are a few quests to run there, most of them solo, and if you choose you can go there and do them. I generally do not recommend it as it takes quite some time to travel and there's plenty of other things to worry about in the meantime.
(22-24) Trestlebridge Trestlebridge fills the gap between 22 and 24 in Lone Lands. There are plenty of solo quests here that lead up to a few impressive chains in the Nan area of goblins. Groups are usually always running here, so it's easy to get them if you need. Run the chains until you are completed with them. Don't worry about heading to Esteldin just yet...that's a stop for later on.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
(24-26) Lone Lands Once you get done in Trestlebridge, you can head back to Ost Guruth and run the remaining quests + Book 2 in its entirety. This should push you to level 26 or 27. Book 2 will require a group for most of it, especially the last few steps. You will also get the starter for Book 3, which takes place within the North Downs. You will want to be sure to advance this quest to the point it asks you to travel to Estledin. You can ignore the Garth Agarwen quests for now, as they are all full-fellowship quests and require a minimum of level 30 to run the instance.
(26-36) The North Downs (Estledin, Othrikar, etc.) Estledin, within the North Downs. This is the next major hub. Once you get here, you will want to do several things. Firstly, set your new bind point. The reason for this is because Esteldin hosts all the trainers, a crafting area, and a bank, so it's the logical next step to set up as your headquarters. Secondly, run around like a mad bunny and pick up ALL of the quests you can find.
Secondly you will want to go due west out of Esteldin, once you get settled in, and pick up the quests from the two farmers. Esteldin is the start of what the rest of the game is like: a plethora of quests. If you thought there were plenty of quests before, just wait! This is when leveling really starts to pick up and you will find yourself literally rocketing through the levels. Remember to run the quest chains in order of the level, not in the order which you received them. When you find yourself running out of blue and white quests, simply run down to the Elven village south of Estledin along the road. You will need to do a starter quests here but once you are done it unlocks another bunch of quests from the NPCs in the village. Run these until you are done. Also check out the Dwarven village of Othrikar, which is North of Esteldin along the road. This is another smaller quest hub that will have plenty of quests for you to do. You will eventually make your way to an Earth-kin camp which is just outside of Estledin to the east, which is another smaller quest hub. The Dol Dinen quests require a group and are a hell of a lot of fun so try not to miss out on these if you get a chance. It's
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide not an instance, just overland elite mobs. Wait until level 30ish to run Book 3. You will need a group for most of this other than the first couple of stages. Once you are done you will be asked to travel to Rivendell to finish. Rivendell is also where the next few Book series start, although you won't want to set it as your hub for some time. Wait until level 45 to worry about any more Book quests...more on this later. You will, however, want to go to Rivendell as soon as you get the opportunity, because the start for a rather lengthy quest chain that takes place in the next leveling area will start with Aragorn in Rivendell. You can get there one of three ways. One, you can find a hunter to give you a teleport. Two, you can use your racial trait to go there (if you are an Elf). Otherwise you will need to head to Ost Guruth and head east, on foot, and make your way through the Trollshaws. It is not an easy journey, nor is it short. Prepare to burn up 30 minutes of time to make this trip.
(36-40) Evendim Evendim is west of the North Downs. Just follow the road through the Fields of Fornost. Tinnudir is the city you are looking for. Just head due west past the cross roads and you will find it located on an island. I would recommend binding here, as there are trainers, and you'll be spending the next few levels here. Most of these quests are solo. You will have some quests from the island, and some from the town of Ost Forod, which is north of the cross roads. Run the quests until you are completely out of them. They are very straight-forward, and very easy. The Aragorn chain is particularly fun, because it's very long and has an amazing story behind it. It will eventually lead to fellowship quest within the Tomb of Elendil at level 40.
Once you get there, be sure to talk with Aragorn to start his chain to restore his sword, Narsil. Eventually he will ask you to talk to a Ranger friend of his in Evendim.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
(40-50) Rivendell, Trollshaws, Misty Mountains, Angmar, Forochel The first thing you should do when you hit 40 is return to Rivendell and set your bind point. At level 40 you can fast-travel from Rivendell to many areas of the game, as well as vice-versa. Rivendell is like Bree...it has an Auction Hall, Banker, Trainers...everything you will need. From Rivendell you will want to travel to the area south, the Trollshaws. This will have some low 40's quests you can work on, as well as some fellowship quests. You can also pick up all of the quests in Rivendell. Once you've done all that you can, head north of Rivendell into the Misty Mountains. Do all of those quests that you can as well until you have nothing left but orange/higher quests. Once you hit 43ish you will be heading off to Angmar, which is north of the North Downs. The first camp is the Earth Kin camp, in the southern part of the zone. There are quite a few quests here, most of which are solo. Just north of here is the main camp of Men as well, which has many more quests to start. The place is called Aughaire, and you will also get
your first full armor set. This is when you will want to finally ditch that Medium Armor trait and slot something else in its place, as the set you earn from the quests at this camp is a light armor set. These quests are all low 40's quests and lead to mid-40's, which also lead to many other areas within Angmar. You will spend a lot of time here. Between Angmar, Misty Mountains, and Trollshaws, you should find yourself an easy path to 45, although you might need to bounce around between them a bit here and there. At 45 you can head to Forochel and work on those quests as well, although your priority at level 45 should be doing Books 4 through 6 in their entirety, as you will gain access to eastern Angmar after completing Book 6, which is rather important for getting to future Book areas as well as some of the dungeons for your class quests. By the time you get to 47 you will likely start running into a lot of group-only quests. In specific, the Book quests are mostly group-only, although they have parts which are soloable, especially books 4 and 5 since you saved them until you are higher level. If you find yourself running out of things to do as a soloer or if things are just a bit too hard for you until you get that next level you will probably have to spend some time looking for a group. Just keep track of those fellowship quests and
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide if you haven't found someone to help you knock them out already, now's the time. As a general rule of thumb groups are extremely easy to get as a Minstrel, since every group needs one, so you shouldn't have any problems.
(50-60) Eregion, The Mines of Moria
South of Gwingris almost to the far end of the map is Mirobel, at the fork of what is now a dry riverbed of the river once known as Sirannon. This river flowed into Moria to the east. Halfway between Gwingris and Mirobel is Echad Eregion, another settlement. East along the dry riverbed, at the first pass before the Walls of Moria is Echad Dunann, the fourth and last settlement within Eregion. It's important to note that in order to swift travel within Eregion, a specific Quest Completion Deed will need to be done.
- Eregion - The Mines of Moria
Gwingris
Eregion Introduced with the Mines of Moria expansion, this area borders the Trollshaws and is the first place players headed for the Mines of Moria will enter. To the north, entering from the Trollshaws, it is wooded and bordered by hills and mountains in the north, turning to grass and thin woods as you move southward. The first settlement found is Gwingris, almost right on the border and housed within the ruins of the ancient city by the same name. The Elves of Rivendell are attempting to regain a foothold in this region.
In Gwingris, you'll find a stable master and several quest-givers. Quests here begin at about level 48 and center mainly around the evils in the woods of Glad Ereg, directly south of the ruins of Gwingris. Quests of note include the Foul Wood chain, given by Lithuilas, the final of which gives a bow (29.1 DPS Beleriand Damage, +1% Critical Hit chance with Ranged Auto-attack, +208 Ranged Critical Rating, -3% Incoming Ranged Damage) that any Hunter would enjoy having or a staff (29.1 DPS, +29 Might, +29 Agility, +29 Vitality, +208 Melee Critical Rating, 10% chance of increasing target's susceptibility to Fire damage) that most
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Lore-Masters would like. Another fork in that quest chain (Seeds for the Future) culminates in a final quest that gives great light torso armor with 452 armor plus other bonuses. The Roosting Tree quest line gives a good set of heavy leggings (692 armor, +29 Agility, and more) while the Lost Goods chain rewards a Rune Stone (Fire Affinity, 29.1 DPS, +29 Will, +29 Fate, and more) for the Rune-keeper. Echad Eregion Another small outpost of Rivendell elves holds this former city. There is another stable master and several quest givers as well. Most of these quests can be soloed, but some have signature enemies that will require some skill to defeat alone. These quests are mainly of levels 49 and 50. Quests of note include the Pembar series of quests, which reward several good items including heavy armor (+312 Wound Resistance Rating and other buffs) and a good 1-handed hammer (25.6 DPS, Ancient Dwarf-make, plus other buffs).
-3% incoming Melee damage, +45 Maximum Morale) while the earring given in that same quest would make any player envious. Mirobel Echad Mirobel is the Elven outpost that is very near the old, ruined city of Mirobel, which was once a great school. It is now infested with Dunlendings, Half-Orcs, and worse. There is a stable master and a few vendors. Many of the quests in Echad Eregion lead here and back again with only a handful originating in Mirobel. Echad Dunann This is a large outpost of Elves and Dwarves with several amenities including a stable master, supplier, healer, and so forth. This is the stronghold that guards the Walls of Moria and is where most of the quests within the Walls of Moria originate. This is also where the Epic quest chain for Book 1, Volume 2 begins, which your character must complete in order to enter the Mines of Moria.
Further in this chain is a medium helm of note (197 armor, +24 Vitality, and more). Later, a heavy shield that is one of the best quest rewards in the game up to this point (1,350 armor, -10% incoming Ranged damage, +424 Block Rating,
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
The Mines of Moria Under the Misty Mountains in the land of Rhovanion, north of Rohan and west of the Mirkwood Forest are the mystical Mines of Moria. Long abandoned by the Dwarves who made them, after their greed unleashed the Balrog from the depths, the Dwarves now plan to retake Durin's Halls. When you first gain entrance to Moria, you will find yourself in the first encampment of Dwarves on the western end of the map. Directly east is the Great Delving, gateway to Moria. There are many areas to this vast complex of mines, tunnels, huge caverns, and splendid Dwarf-hewn rock works. North of The Great Delving is the western end of the long halls called Durin's Way, where most of your adventuring will likely start. Directly east of the Delving is New Khazad-dum and further east is Old Khazad-dum with an exit from the mines east of that to Dimril Dale and Lothlorien. South of the Great Delving are the Silvertine Lodes, then the Water-Works, east of which are The Flaming Deeps, then the Redhorn Lodes, and finally the Foundations of Stone. The instance area Zirakzigil is also inside Moria.
Most of your adventuring will be quested from The Great Delving and Durin's Way. At the center of Durin's Way is the 21st Hall, where you'll spend your crafting time and work with your Legendary Items. Durin's Way Capping the northern end of the map, this is the hub of the Dwarves' activities in the Mines so far. Here you'll find Three-Forks Camp (Dolven-View), the instance entrance to Zirakzigil, The Stone Hall, 21st Hall, and entrances to Zelem-Melek and Nud-Melek (Khazad-dum). Most of the quests here begin in Dolven-View and eventually lead to the Stone Hall and the Twenty-First Hall. They center around Orc, Goblin, and Merrevail infestations of the area. Quests are of level 48 and higher, most beginning at around 50, and are small group and fellowship quests for the most part. Many can be soloed by a strong player, however. The introductory quest "Welcome to Moria" will introduce you to most of the NPCs within these areas of Moria, including quest-givers. Damage-dealers will like the Great Hammer of Moria (29.67 DPS, 2-handed, with other buffs) that comes from the quest of the similar name.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide The same quest also rewards The Shield of Moria (heavy, 1,296 armor, plenty of other buffs) if your character prefers armor. Many class-specific and Legendary Item quests are also available in Durin's Halls, mainly in The Stone Hall/Dolven-View. The Great Delving / The Silvertine Lodes These two areas are side-by-side (or over-and-under if you prefer). The Great Delving is a part of Durin's Way and the Silvertine Lodes are more or less underneath it. Most of the quests here involve killing goblins--there are several camps of them--and finding specific items within them. Solo players will need to be over level 53, but fellowships can be lower in level. While the rewards in the Silvertine Lodes aren't spectacular enough to mention by name, they are consistent and a lot of 3rd Age legeldaries drop here. The Mark of Loyalty, Know Thine Enemy, and Lawlessness Among Goblins are quests worth doing. You'll find all of the quest-givers are in one area at the entrance to the mine shafts. The Flaming Water-Works, and Stone
Deeps, The Foundations of
While very different from one another in appearance and name, these areas are intricately tied together and lie next to one another on the map along the southern end of Moria. Collectively called "The Lower Deeps," these areas house many of the more challenging quests within Moria. Filled with Orcs, worms, and servants of Saruman, these areas are dangerous and bloody. Most of the quests here are of level 53 and higher. The Fungus series of quests will be of interest to light armor wearers (Lore-masters and Rune-keepers) as a reward includes a great piece of light armor (508 armor, +59 Power, +35 Will, and more). The same quest chain yields a heavy shield (1,486 armor, +46 Power, +50 Morale, and more). Another quest in that chain rewards with a good 1-Handed Sword (+134 Morale, chance of morale transfer from opponent to wielder on hit). The quest titled "Kheled-menem: Ghashug" gives a great Warden's Shield (826 armor, +18 Agility, Might, Vitality, and more). Other Areas Within Moria The other areas within Moria contain many more quests and instances. Especially in Khazad-dum. Most of these are fellowship quests of higher level. They center around Legendary Items, the Epic
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide quest line, and the final level 60 quests for characters to cap their levels: which ends in a confrontation with the Balrog himself. In The Shadowy Abyss (below Nud-melek, a part of Zelem-melek), is literally the bottom of the mines. The only outpost is the Shadowed Refuge and the area is filled with Orc-kind and worse. There are many mine nodes, however. Keep your eyes open for trolls, especially if you're solo.
(60-65) Mirkwood It's shockingly fast to gain five levels in Mirkwood. The region is chock full of quests as you make your way from the west end to the east end of the map. The average player can easily get from 60-65 in about a week while the more hardcore types can swiftly blow through the content in a couple of days. Mirkwood isn't a very big place, and the main storyline neatly connects the various quest hubs together. Before you start your journey, keep in mind that many quests offer IXP as rewards, not to mention that every kill grants you more IXP. Don't let them go to waste! If you're level 60 and your current weapons are maxed out, equip any level 59-60 LI to collect those
precious points. However, remember that deconstructing a level 60 LI beyond level 11 only yields a Moria IXP rune, which can't be used on level 61+ LIs. Therefore, as soon as you hit level 61, immediately equip any old level 61 LI, and deconstruct that level 59-60 LI. Pour the rest of your IXP into the level 61 until you hit level 65. Once you have an LI you'll want to keep indefinitely, deconstruct that level 61 LI and put the points into your active weapon. This will save you from spending a lot of time in grinding IXP runes for your LI. Although the ideal level to enter Mirkwood is 60, some players may feel overwhelmed and not ready. Don't worry; there is no rush. You can finish up any leftover quests you have in Moria; alternatively if you want to take it easy, do the simple, non-combat repeatable quests in Lothlórien. Better yet, you can gain a level or two in a few skirmishes, the most significant addition to LOTRO since the legendary item system. I'll discuss skirmishes in a little bit. However, for the sake of the guide, I'll assume that you land in Mirkwood at level 60. You can easily solo your way to 65, as there are only a couple of quests that require a small fellowship. Feel free to skip them if you have trouble finding a group. The most group quests (3- and 6person group instances, and the raid) are
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide located at the camp in Dol Guldur, but you don't have to worry about doing them until you hit 65.
Western Mirkwood As mentioned earlier, when you complete the Mirkwood Landing instance, you wind up in the "real" version of the Mirk-eaves. As you pick up the quests, don't forget to check out the Malledrhim barterers; one of them offers some nice earrings. Wardens and Hunters should pay special attention to these barter NPCs, as they also have the Muster in Mirk-eaves and Guide to Mirk-eaves skills, worth a few feathers each. When you've finished with Mirk-eaves you may be tempted to head to the Haunted Inn in the Dourstocks since the Book quest leads you in that direction, but hold off on that. Instead, head to Echad Mothelen (13.5 S, 58.1 W) first, a small campsite with NPCs that give a healthy number of quests. It's a short but worthwhile detour on route to the Haunted Inn. Once you reach the Inn, pay a visit to the Malledrhim NPCs inside; one of them offers some nice bracelets. After finishing with the Haunted Inn quests, head south to Estolad Mernael (16.9 S, 51.5 W) in the
swampy Drownholt. In certain locations, doing all the quests will unlock repeatable quests, with Malledrhim feathers as rewards. These feathers can be traded for level 65 morale and power pots, a cheap and easy alternative to buying them off the AH. There are several repeatable quests, though some aren't worth doing because they take too much time or require you to go to some out of the way place to kill mobs. For the fastest way to earn feathers, I recommend talking to Handelen in Thangulhad (12.7 S, 46.6 W) and accept the quests "Scouting in Force" and "An Eye on the Enemy". If you have your quest tracker turned on, simply ride on your horse and follow the arrow. Very easy and fast.
Central Mirkwood Make your way to the elven hideout of Ost Galadh, in Emyn Lum. This is right smack in the middle of the map, so you can't miss it. Again, check out the Malledhrim barter NPCs for goodies such as recipes, jewelry, and LIs. This is the new 21st hall in the sense that you have almost all the important NPCs and facilities here (e.g. crafting hall, bard, Relic-master and Forge-master). Oddly there is no AH, so if you're not a hunter or
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide warden that can easily port anywhere, if you need to visit an AH, use your racial map to visit one in any of the starter areas. You can also swift travel from Ost Galadh to Calas Galadhon for an AH. Do all the quests in Ost Galadh, and when you've finished you can either go north to the spider infested Scuttledells or south to Iavassul's Watch (16.4 S, 50.5 W) in Taur Morvith. You'll eventually want to quest in both areas so it doesn't matter which you visit first. There is one special repeatable quest in Ost Galadh that shouldn't be missed. It's a crafting quest that you pick up from the Relic-master called "Silken Threads". The quest takes you to the Scuttledells where you're supposed to collect 25 pristine webbing from spiders. To make this quest go faster, enter the spider cave at the very northwest part of the Scuttledells. The reward for turning in this quest is a Compendium of Middle-earth II, a special crafting component used to make orange crafted relics. There's a similar crafting quest in Anazarmekhem called "Trace Metals" in which you have to collect 15 iron ingots and 10 burnished worm scales. Kill orcs for the ingots and worms for the scales. The rewards is a Compendium of Middle-earth I, a crafting component used to make teal crafted relics.
Eastern Mirkwood Head a little north and east to the outpost of Thangulhad, in Gathburz. As usual, see what the Barter vendors have to offer. There are some nice level 65 cloaks, and morale/power pots as well. There are plenty of quests here so you might be here for a while. Be careful while you wander around, as you may run into signature level mobs. Soloing one isn't difficult, but you may get in trouble if you accidentally aggro another mob in the process. You'll most likely start on the Mithechad (17.6 S, 48.3 W) quests in the Ashenslades when you hit level 64. Finish off with Dol Guldur. If you do the book quest chain at the same time as you're doing these quests, you'll hit 65 easily without the need to do any repeatable quests or mob grinding. Even when you hit 65, you don't have to stop questing if there are still some available. Remember that many quests offer IXP as rewards, so finish as many quests as possible. Also, if you haven't reached Kindred reputation with the Malledrhim yet, do some of the repeatable quests in Thangulhad and the Ashenslades. There's also one more quest hub, Barad Angol (17.4 S, 44.5 W) for you to check out if you wish. In Dol Guldur, you'll find that many of the quests are for group instances.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Remember that the Medallions of Mirkwood only drop in these group instances, so if you want those stat scrolls start running those instances. On a related note, the medallions can also be bartered for +15 and +25 radiance gear, another reason why you may want to run those instances, particularly the easier 3-person ones. Visit your class trainer to see what gear is available and how many medallions are required.
Minstrel Class Quests and related Deeds/Traits You will have several class-specific quests as you progress through the world of Middle Earth. These quests will test the strength of your knowledge, the sharpness of your wit, and the tone of your voice. They will enable you to become a stronger minstrel, to tell greater tales, and to bring more renown to the fellowships you are a part of.
A Song for Company This is a level 15 quest, and the first class quest that you run into. It is available from any minstrel trainer you run into across the realm. More than likely you will be somewhere close to Bree at this point which is a good thing, because the quest will start and end at Piper Prescott, a bard of great renown who is located within the Prancing Pony tavern. The first step is to speak to one of your minstrel trainers. They will then send you to The Prancing Pony in the city of Bree. There, seated casually near the center of the room, proudly providing entertainment for the packed crowd, you will find Piper Prescott, one of the more famous Minstrels of the land. Piper tells you a tale of a young hobbit in need of assistance, and gives you directions as to find him. Simply leave the Pony and head west out of the gate. Leland Underhill will be just outside of the gates proper, on the left-hand side of the road. He needs your help on a little adventure. You cannot be in a Fellowship to do this quest, and you will get a prompt on your screen that will remind you. Once you are by yourself you can speak with Leland and he will transport you to a special quest-instance.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide The instance itself is fairly simple. You are supposed to help Leland recover something that was stolen from him...which turns out to be nothing more than his lunch! Hungry hobbits just won't do, so after you help him defeat the bandits and win back his lunch, he's content. In fact, he offers to share with everyone, including the bandits who originally stole it from him. After you are done you simply talk to Leland and he will transport you out of the instance. Once you are out you can head back to the Prancing Pony and talk to Piper. He's pleased to hear about your successful return, but offers up another small challenge: tell the tale to the crowd and see how they react. Once you jump on top of one of the tables, ignoring the food and drink of the patrons because as anyone who is anyone knows you just can't get in the way of a minstrel and his business, simply click on the note within your inventory to tell the Tale of Leland's Lunch to the crowd. Once you are finished you can talk to Piper once again and he will reward you with a completed quest, as well as the Medium Armor trait. The Medium armor trait is arguably one of the most important, if not the most important trait you will get until level 50. This allows you to wear both light and medium armor, which is a great benefit
to you as you level up, because it allows you to mix-and-match different types of armor to get the max benefit. Once you get to 50 and start working on an Instance set or a class set from the Rift you can slot something else in place of the Medium Armor trait, but once you get this at level 15 I highly recommend that you slot this trait and keep it slotted until you reach Angmar and get your first full set of light gear with bonuses. Other minstrels might argue that you can put more "useful" skills in its slot, but I would disagree. Yes, at the higher levels you will have other skills that are definitely more useful than wearing medium armor, especially when you have acquired a full instance set of light gear or the Rift set, but for leveling up and the maximization of stats, I would absolutely take this trait and stick with it.
A Minstrel's Hope This is the level 30 class quest for the Minstrel, and the second in the chain of quests that culminate at level 50. Once again, any minstrel trainer in the world will have this quest for you once you ding level 30. If you use the leveling guide provided within this guide you will be somewhere in the North Downs around level 30. Your trainers will ask you to seek out Leigh Putnam, who is located in the
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide besieged town of Trestlebridge, which is located in the North Downs. You can use a horse to get here from Bree. Trestlebridge is in dire straits at present. They are besieged on all sides by orcs. It is up to you to help rescue some of them and help lighten the mood around town with your songs of glory and deeds! Once you get to Trestlebridge just follow the main path through town until you see Leigh Putnam. She will explain the situation to you. Once again, you will need to be solo in order to gain access to the instance where the actual quest takes place. Once you are out of a fellowship simply talk to Leigh and she will transport you and her into an instance. Follow Leigh as she makes her way through the cave tunnels to the refugees. Once you arrive it appears as though everyone is safe. None of the refugees think they need to follow you back to town. They think all of the orcs have left. But just when things seem to be taking a turn for the better, Leigh's brother shows up with another of Trestlebridge's finest, shouting that orcs are hot on their heels. Your role in this particular fight is to keep the two NPCs alive throughout the fight. There will be several waves of mobs. They are signature, so you really want to try and avoid aggro if you possibly can and let the two NPCs take
all of the damage. Simply assist and patch heal as necessary. Don't forget to use your Song of Soothing as often as it pops in order to de-aggro and keep everything focused on the two NPCs. After two waves of multiple orcs you will get a single orc boss. Once you have helped defeat the orcs everyone is entirely grateful...and rightfully so. You did, after all, just save their skins from the orc pits. Leigh congratulates you and offers to take you out of the instance. Once you are out you can hail Leigh for completion of the quest. Along with the completion you gain the Glorious Anthem trait. This gives you a 15 second increased to the duration of your Anthems, as well as a line bonus of 0.3 to morale regeneration in combat.
The Finest Melody is Understanding This is the level 45 class quest. Once again it is available at any minstrel trainer across Middle Earth. You will be required to speak with Baillindiel. It is a simple turn-in quest. By the time you get this quest you will be bound in Rivendell, so simply fast-travel to Bree, then fast-travel to Celondim, turn around to the docks and
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide viola.
A Lesson from Lindir
Articles on Harmony This is a level 50 quest you will receive after turning in The Finest Melody. It is basically one big gathering/kill quest. There are multiple steps to this and the following quest, so do not be deceived. You will gather the first set of components only to be told you need another set. Be prepared to do a lot of hiking around and farming mobs, both solo and in the higher level dungeons. A great list can be found at http://www.pooh.cz/lotro/a.asp?a=20 14367 detailing where you can find each component.
Implements of Song This is a level 50 quest you will receive after turning in The Finest Melody. It's pretty much the same as the previous. A bunch of components that need to be gathered. Like the previous quest (which can be done at the same time) there are multiple steps. You can use the chart from the above link to help you find where and what drops the items you need.
After you are done with the two prior steps you will be sent to Lindir in Rivendell where you will be given your final legendary skill, Fellowship's Heart. Lindir can be found in the Last Homely House (Elrond's home) in the Hall of Fire.
Instances Instances within LOTRO are few and far between. There are only several "major" instances until you hit level 45. That is, instances which don't correspond with the Epic Book quests and have their own separate quest chains. Many people bypass them entirely as they can slow the leveling process considerably, which is a downright shame in my opinion. Gone are the days when players used to thrive on dungeons. Now it's all about solo play and rapid advancement. But if you are up for a challenge and you like going in with a full group and taking several hours to complete quest chains, getting phat lewts and knowing you personally were responsible for kicking the butt of the boss mobs, then you will want to be sure to check out the following. Keep in mind that most of the instances within LOTRO take
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide 4-6 hours to complete the first couple of times through, so you should make sure to have plenty of time to go in beforehand. While the instances and dungeons within LOTRO are not nearly as challenging as in other games (this is a game tailored for the casual player after all) they are still a heck of a lot of fun and can add a little something extra if you find yourself needing a dungeon run or fights requiring more than just 2 or 3 people.
Great Barrows The Great Barrows, also known as GB, is the first instance within LOTRO. It's set for the mid-20's and if you picked up the quests from Bree and ran all of the chains to their end, you should have several quests for this instance. It will require two runs to fully complete as you cannot get the followup for the main boss mob until you get the 2 key pieces from the two mini-boss fights, and then turn them in back in Bree. It's rather large, and can take a few hours, so save this for a time when you know you can dedicate.
Garth Agarwen The second major instance within Lord of the Rings Online. It is also known as GA. There are several "outer" quest chains that lead to inner quests, and I highly recommend doing them if you can get a static group together. If you can't get a static group together this place can be a pain because there are so many quests and so many different chains that trying to find pickup people with the same steps as you is nearly impossible. The place is also a maze, in and of itself. You can find a really good map over at http://forums.lotro.com/showthread. php?t=117001 to help you with your transition. You have to kill mobs in particular order to get the keys to unlock other portions of the dungeon. The twins drop the key to get into Ivar's area, and Ivar drops the key to get into the Red Maid's area. The only two challenging fights in this zone are the Red Maid and Ivar, and out of the two Ivar is the hardest. The Red Maid is a straight up tank-and-spank mob, although she does have a nasty knockback. Ivar is a bit more of an issue. When you take him out you should focus on his elite add first, then him. Every time he spawns an elite add, kill it. Ignore the banner adds because he will eventually drain their health
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide completely. This is a long fight. Use ALL BLUE conjunctions every time you get them to counter his power drain. Have the lore-master feed power to you and the tank + drain from Ivar/his add. It's fairly straight-forward, just that his power drain can be a bit of a pain.
38-40, so be prepared. There is a map with the linear route at http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Area :Fornost. You can accomplish pretty much all of the inner quests if you follow this route, so you shouldn't have to do more than one run. Unless you want to out of fun! While lengthy, this is a great dungeon for the level.
Fornost Fornost is the third major instance of LOTRO. It's rated for 38th to 40th level characters, but I would recommend waiting to level 40. If you ran Esteldin quests you will have gotten a few starters for here, and once you head up to Fornost proper you will find a camp which has even more quests. You can run the outer quests with 3-4 people fairly easy, but once you get to the inner quests inside the instance you will want a full, well-balanced group. You will absolutely need a lore-master, a tank, and a minstrel. A burglar too if you can find one. And keep in mind, getting to the final boss in here can literally take 6-8 hours if you go in at the appropriate levels. Frustratingly, most players bypass this dungeon entirely because it "takes too long", but if you are a person who really likes a challenge you won't want to skip this place. It's an absolute blast. But it does take 6-8 hours if you go in at level
Urugarth Also known as Uru, this dungeon is best suited to a team of 48+ adventurers, although it is rated for 45+. It is located within Angmar. It is not for the faint of heart or those who do not have the time to go. It will take several hours, but is well worth the time. All of the instances within Lord of the Rings Online are extremely well done, and this is par for the course. You should absolutely do the quests for this area, as well as run the dungeon. There's an absolutely phenomenal map with the path and walkthrough over at http://www.pooh.cz/lotro/a.asp?a=20 14335. There are also quite a few class-specific items which drop here in relation to the class quests for 45-50, so you will be coming here on probably more than 1 occasion.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Carn Dum
Barad Gularan
Also known as CD, this is another high-level instance in Angmar, rated for 45th to 50th level. You will need items for your level 45 class quest from within. This is one of the larger dungeons and has several areas, revolves around several quest lines, and requires a well-oiled team of players to complete. A really great guide with maps and tips on the boss mobs can be found at http://allshallfade.guildlaunch.com /forums/viewtopic.php?p=1130023& ;gid=17132 which I really love. There are also Book quests related to this dungeon, and there are specific keys and locks which must be met in order to gain access to the dungeon. This is the only single-fellowship instance in the game which requires you to have locks.
Also known as BG, this is one of the premier high-level dungeons of LOTRO. You should be level 50. It is also an extremely short and straight-forward dungeon, only taking a couple of hours to complete if you avoid any wipes. It can be found in north-east Angmar. Related quest information can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Bar ad_G%C3%BAlaran. This is mostly a "for the fun of it" dungeon, as there really aren't any class-specific quests that relate to it.
Glinghant Also known as The Gardens, it is one of the several instances of Annuminas and is in the top 3 dungeons which should be focused on after you are done with book quests and sundries, as you can earn a full set of Annuminas set armor by completing the three dungeons within the area. Keep in mind that all of the Annuminas dungeons cannot be entered unless specific outer areas are cleared of mobs and "unlocked". The NPC factions will occasionally take back control in this dynamic setting, so at times you might find access to the Annuminas dungeons
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide blocked until you unlock them. More information can be found for each specific area at the links provided. Most of the quests are repeatable, as well. The set armor as detailed later in the guide is quite nice, and well worth the time if you don't plan on Rifting, or even if you do, as it provides you with another alternative while you are earning your Rift set. The Garden is a short instance, taking only an hour or hour and half at most for a well-oiled team of players. Fear and disease can be a pain here so either have high resists or bring potions with you. The place is fairly linear, and the end boss requires a full fellowship and is a high-DPS fight. He'll spawn adds periodically through the fight but your best bet is to simply ignore the adds by either CC or having your Guardian AoE taunt and simply burn the final boss down as fast as possible, then worry about the adds. A fairly simple DPS fight. A good overview can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Gli nghant.
Ost Elendil Also known as OE, this is another Annuminas dungeon. It is the second most difficult, but is also fairly short if you know what you are doing and have no wipes. The first few times through you might take longer but once you get it down, it's very quick, taking only about an hour to an hour and a half. A decent overview can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Ost _Elendil.
Haudh Valandil Also known as HV, this is arguably the hardest instance in the entire game. You will absolutely want a well-balanced group for this. You will need a Lore-master for sure for wounds/disease curing, a Guardian for tanking, and a Captain for buffs/rezzing/summoning in case of wipes. Additionally you can fill up the last two slots as you see fit, but a Burglar and Hunter or Champion are good picks. You will not want to go in here with duplicate classes...a balanced group is key to success. There is a detailed overview of this zone to be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Hau
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide dh_Valandil but the most important key to this instance is a well-balanced group of skilled players. People who have run challenging content in other games will find this to be one of the funnest instances in the entire game, and well worth running on multiple occasions. For newer players, this place is absolutely challenging and may take multiple runs to clear.
The Rift of Nurz Ghashu The Rift is a 12 man instance, culminating in a fight with a Balrog. This is quite possibly the most challenging instance within the entire game. The boss mobs drop gems which can be traded to an NPC in exchange for gear...each boss mob drops a specific gem for a specific piece. There are many different tactics and strategies across the 'net that people use for this encounter. This is located in NE Angmar and is best left to level 50. A basic guide to the instance and mobs can be found at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/The _Rift_of_N%C3%BBrz_Gh%C3%A2shu. This is a lengthy instance and works off of a lock system, meaning you can save your progress if you find that you cannot complete this area in one evening.
The zone resets each Thursday evening. Most guilds break this up over 2 nights, although the more "hardcore" guilds will do this in one.
Gear Sets For the most part you will be earning quest gear as you level up from one to 50 throughout Middle Earth, but as you get into the higher levels of the game and specifically certain areas you will find armor sets and jewelery sets that are extremely fun to earn and worthwhile because of the set bonuses you will receive from wearing full sets. The bonuses range depending on how many pieces of the set you are wearing. There are also Reputation-based sets of gear that can be acquired from maxing out your faction with the various Reputation factions available as detailed earlier on in the guide. With such a wide variety of gear available to you at the max level, it's really up to you as to what you want to focus on, because each set will have its own unique bonuses and looks. It is also important to note that while the Rift set is arguably the "best" in the game, gear is not the same in LOTRO as it is in other games. Yes, Rift gear is nice, and it
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide has slightly better stats and different bonuses than the Rep sets, PvP set, or Instance sets but that is really all it is...a different set. The stat differences do not make the Rift set "godly" in comparison to the other sets, which means you can function at pretty much the same level as anyone else even if you don't have one set or another. Player skill factors more in this game than armor, whereas in other games it was the other way around. There is no gear disparity in LOTRO. You do not "need" tier 1 to get to tier 2 to get to tier 3 and so on and so forth. While gear can help make fights substantially less difficult there is not a single encounter in the game that requires a specific set of gear or a specific arrangement of your traits in order to defeat. Any players who tell you otherwise are locked in the mindset that gear>skill, which is not the case. Skill>gear in this game.
Reputation Sets There are various reputations throughout Middle Earth, and maxing your faction with each can lead to some rewarding benefits. Along with a drastically reduced repair bill and other nice perks, you also gain access to gear sets which can only be purchased from the various Rep vendors once you have reached that prestigious level. The best guide you can find that shows you each distinct set and lists of the faction necessary to earn them and which factions have what can be found over at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Cat egory:Reputation.
Instance Sets There are 2 instance sets of gear within LOTRO. A set from the Angmar dungeons, and a set from the Annuminas dungeons. The Angmar set is easier to obtain and takes less time, but the stats are significantly less. As of book 14 (July 2008) the stats on both sets have been significantly increased. As you can see over at http://www.lotro-europe.com/news.ph p?id=6798&type=Dev the new stat bonuses are quite nice.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide Both sets are earned through a barter-type system where you gather components from within the dungeons off of boss mobs and regular mobs and trade them at Quest NPCs for each dungeon area.
Rift Set As previously mentioned, the Rift set of armor comes from the gem drops off of the boss mobs within the instance itself. You can find the NPCs who trade gems for armor in Angmar, at the ranger outpost called Iorelen's Camp. You can find basic information at http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Ior ellen%27s_Camp. These sets are class-specific, which makes them extremely fun to get. And they look pretty darn cool!
Helegrod Set Similar to the Rift, the Helegrod set is based upon barter items looted from the boss mobs within Helegrod. Unlike the Rift, Helegrod is a 24 man raid zone, and the only one to-date within LOTRO. Each class-specific armor set is bartered from vendors within Elrond's house in Rivendell. You will need specific drops from the boss mobs to earn your set.
Crafted Set Crafted gear in LOTRO is really nice. Unlike in other games, it's actually viable gear, instead of just thrown in for the sake of giving people the ability to craft. In most cases crafted gear is actually better than similar level gear from the quests. At the cap it is comparable to the Instance and Reputation sets, but slightly less than the Rift set. A great overview can be found over at http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Cate gory:Recipes. Just follow the tabs and you will see the recipes by tier, as well as what the resources required are, and also the regular successful combines along with the critical success combines making it easy for you to make the best educated decision as to what kind of gear you want to have
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide for your playstyle.
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The Unofficial Lord of the Rings Online Minstrel Guide
Conclusion
Earth as the Minstrel, teller of tales, singer of songs, and bringer of light into the dark places.
In closing, the Minstrel is almost a hybrid class that has a multi-functional purpose within Lord of the Rings Online. The beauty of the game, and the class, is the ability to perform under a variety of circumstances without breaking a sweat. There will be small occurrences where players might feel the need to deviate from this guide, and that is fine. LOTRO is an extremely casual-based game that does not require strict adherence to gear or stats, whereas other games you might have played place a heavy emphasis on those two factors. With that being said, LOTRO is a far more relaxing and enjoyable setting than many other games on the market, because you can focus less on the gear and stats and more on actual enjoyment of the game. But for those of you out there who derive enjoyment from min/maxing, then this guide will help you get started. The minstrel class is a highly rewarding class to play. You will never lack for groups, and you have the highest survivability rating of all the classes in the game. You can fear, mez, FD, heal, DPS, and flat-out kick butt. There is no situation that you cannot adapt to. Best of luck in your adventures, and may you enjoy your time within Middle
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