Lately this blog has concentrated heavily on news about Mines of Moria. As exciting as that is, I really feel more attention needs to be given to helping players and offering my thoughts on other things.
So I’ve started a new series called Tip Time. Each post will highlight things I’ve found helpful and things I wish I knew when I started. At worst this series will be weekly, at best several times a week.
Time for today’s tips! There’s 9 total listed below.
Helpful UI Adjustments
- Moving UI Elements — All aspects of the UI can be repositioned. Press ctrl+\ and all elements will be given bars so you can drag them around. You can also rotate the quick bars by clicking on their little gold circle button.
- Adding Additional Quickslot Bars - In the Options menu, go to the UI options section. Here you can enable additional quickslot bars, which will come in handy as you get higher in level and have a whole bunch of items you may want to use at a moment’s notice. You can set these up to always be visible, but note that you’ll only see them if there’s actually icons present.This is also very good for separating things a bit more than would normally be allowed!
- Showing the Skill Queue Display — The skill queue display shows what skill your character will execute next. Unlike some MMORPGs, LotRO allows you to hit a skill before the current one completes so you can always stay a step ahead. I really like showing the skill queue display because of this as it makes me feel a bit more in control of the action.This will only appear during fights as well, so it can be a good indicator of when you have aggro or if an enemy has stopped chasing you.
- Filtering the Radar - Right click the radar (also referred to as the mini-map) and you will be presented with a pop-up that will let you enable or disable radar icons. This is especially useful when you just can’t seem to find something that you know is nearby. LotRO has a tendency to stack important things on top of each other, completely obscuring useful icons. I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t notice a quest giver because the radar only showed that they sell weapons too.
- Trivial Quests - The UI Options menu lets you turn all sorts of interesting things on or off. What should be changed is up to you, but one worth noting is the button labeled “View Trivial Quest Icons in the Radar”.This will show ring icons for ALL quest givers in the radar. By default, LotRO only displays those within your level range. While this is usually sufficient, I like having all quest givers shown… Even if a quest is outside of your level, you can still get useful items or reputation awards from it.
- Show Item Names — By default, LotRO does not display hovering names for items. You can turn this ability on in the UI Options menu by clicking the “Item Names” box. This can be very useful if you just don’t notice an important flashing item nearby.
- Hide Names — Pressing N on your keyboard at any time will show or hide floating names in the game. I mostly just turn this off when I’m taking screen shots.
- Hide the UI - You can hide the entire user interface by pressing F12. Again, I only really use this when taking screen shots. Note that this doesn’t hide names or floating icons (such as those over NPCs; these can also be disabled in the UI Options if desired).
- Directional Selection Indicator - In the Combat Options window, you can turn this setting on. Basically it just makes a dotted line that points to your current selection. Really helpful if you get turned around during a fight or are trying to figure out where a nearby item really is.
Offhand this covers the UI adjustments I make. LotRO houses many of these settings server side, so once you set it up on one computer for your character it should be set up from anywhere you log in. Quite nice.
