While there are always people who name their characters something goofy like “bladeofdeath”, a lot of LOTRO players seem to like to name their characters something a bit more fitting. Unfortunately, the game’s been out for so long that many of the more obvious names are taken, including any real variation of the suggestions Turbine offers when you make a new character.
To help you out, I’ve put together a list of name generators and related tools. I won’t pretend to know which ones are more true to the lore than others, but I think these can get your thoughts going. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the nice things about the search function on MMeOw is that I can tell what people look for once they get to our site. I thought it’d be smart to base some of our Tip Time entries on these searches.
Shadowfoot is a named wolf that wanders around the Old Forest. For most he’ll be a push over: he’s only level 13 and doesn’t have any obvious strengths. What’s unusual about him is that he consistently drops multiple [Shadowfoot’s Paw]s. These are not grayed out as vendor trash.
A while back, items used for critical success chances while crafting were largely gathered from mobs. Some of these were extremely specific and came from certain notable enemies. Things have been streamlined since then. You might still have some of these items, but they can be traded in for the current critical crafting items with various NPC traders. I spent some time looking at what they offered and Shadowfoot’s Paw wasn’t on the menu.
It’s not for crafting. I’ve yet to find a quest that specifically asks for [Shadowfoot’s Paw] either. I thought that perhaps this was one that managed to slip by unnoticed; however, I also found a thread on the European LOTRO forums from 2008 that discusses the general uselessness of this item.
Maybe it’s just playing off our assumption that everything in a MMORPG has to have a real use. Someone wants barghest eyes, after all. Don’t ask me.
Has anyone found out something about this I’ve missed?
Today’s Tip Time involves the Quest Guide and Quest Tracker. Through normal gameplay various quests will be added to your Quest Tracker. Most people know that you can control the appearance of quests in the Quest Tracker through your Quest Log. A quick way of getting there is just by clicking the rings next to your quests in the Tracker.
What you may not know is that you can also right click the rings next to your quests.
Sub-menu for the Quest Tracker
This gives you a small menu of additional options:
Show in Quest Log: Opens up the Quest Log with this quest as the focus. This is the same as left-clicking the quest ring.
Lock: Locks the quest in the Quest Tracker and prevents it from being replaced automatically as you collect new quests or finish objectives.
Set Who Note: Sets this quest as your note in the Looking for Fellowship display. This way others can see what you’re focusing on.
Find Others on Quests: Finds others through the Looking for Fellowship display that are currently doing this quest. Helpful if you need a group, but it presumes they’re paying attention to the LFF display. Unfortunately, many people do not.
Set as Quest Guide Focus: Sets the selected quest as the focus on the Quest Guide, meaning that the arrow in the radar will focus on that quest instead of whatever it was focusing on previously. This is quite useful because otherwise the Quest Guide will automatically change focus depending on your position.
Remove: Remove from the Quest Tracker and Guide, but not from the Log.
Remove All: Same as above, but affects all quests in the Tracker and Guide.
I didn’t realize all of these options were available early on, but they can be quite useful.
I think most people are aware of the basic keyboard shortcuts in LotRO. K for skills, L for your quest log, I for inventory and so forth. There are others that are a little less obvious, likely only used by those who bother to look at the in-game key mapping menus. I thought it would be nice to cover some of the most useful ones here. Obviously these are using the default key mappings.
Auto Loot
Auto Loot automatically takes all items from a corpse, assuming you have room. This can be enabled by default in the UI Settings menu, but if you’d rather leave it off you can use Shift+Left Click to do it as you wish. Useful when you have tons of inventory space and don’t want to waste time. Slayer Deeds come to mind.
Detach Tooltip
Hovering over almost anything in-game displays a relevant tool tip. If, for some reason, you don’t want that tool tip to go away, you can press H. This detaches the tool tip and converts it to a normal box. You can move it around as you please.
Autoattack Toggle
I’m sure everyone knows that the number keys handle the skills you’ve placed in your quickslots. What about your normal attack? Just hit ~ (tilde) to initiate it. This was something I didn’t realize until I was in the game for a few weeks. Quite useful. If you have a ranged attack and are far enough away (assuming you don’t have “run to target on attack” enabled in the Options), this will initiate that as well.
