Middle-earth Gameplay Guide

Have you just gone through the Ring Portal to Middle-Earth and are unsure how to proceed? Here are some suggestions which may help to keep you alive.

Please note that some sections of the page concern tactics and suggestions by a single user, particularly certain gameplay styles which were thought up by a single user. If you don't like a certain aspect of one gameplay style, just add a subsection with different rules.

Pages to Visit
This Wiki contains information relating to nearly every aspect of The Lord of the Rings Mod. Some of the major ones that new players should read about are listed below. Emphasis on major ones; the links for the pages below only make up a small portion of the Wiki's content, due to the size of this mod.

As always, the Wiki contributors and the admins are happy to answer any questions you may have, but be sure to check the FAQ first!

If you have a suggestion for the mod, feel free to give it to the admins at the Suggestions Forum.

A summation of some of the most important gameplay tips for new players can be found here.

Concerning Gameplay Mechanics

 * Achievements- Set goals for yourself
 * Alignment- Determines your friends and enemies in Middle-Earth
 * Biomes- Explore Middle-Earth in its entirety
 * Brewing- Make a variety of drinks
 * Building Tips- Learn how to build in the style of any faction
 * Commands- Set alignment, gamerules, and more
 * Compatibility with other mods- Learn which mods are compatible with the LotR mod, and which ones are not.
 * Elven Portal/Morgul Portal- Provides a way back to the Overworld
 * Fast Travel System- Get to places quicker
 * Hiring- Build your own army
 * Invasion- Be prepared to run or fight!
 * Mini-Quest System- Perform tasks to earn alignment and money
 * Optimizing Performance- Tips to help you get the most out of this mod
 * Player Respawning- Handy for long distance travelers
 * Player vs. Player- Know how to fight your foes in Middle-Earth
 * Resource Packs- Customize your mod
 * Roads- The road goes ever on and on...
 * Shire Reckoning- Keep track of the date in Middle-Earth
 * Trading- Buy or sell items with silver coin currency

Concerning Blocks and Items

 * Ancient Items- May yield useful and possibly enchanted weapons/armor
 * Banners- One for each faction, used to protect an area or grant buffs to your hired troops
 * Crafting Tables- To craft faction-specific recipes
 * Ent Draught- A magical drink for friends of Fangorn
 * Horn of Command- Summon or "freeze" your hired troops
 * Beta20Banners.pngil- The new "diamond"
 * Mug- Contains drinks
 * Mystery Web- Right-click to discover what's inside
 * New Weapon Types- A rundown of new weapons added in the mod
 * Plate- Contains food
 * Pouch- Expand your inventory
 * Saddle- Now able to craft
 * Sword of Command- Grants ability to target a mob for hired troops to attack

Concerning Mobs
Hint: Far Harad is home to many exotic creatures that cannot be found anywhere else in Middle-Earth. Be wary though! Some of them are hungry predators.
 * Bandit- The most likely cause of lost possessions
 * Elves- The oldest, wisest, and fairest race in Middle-Earth
 * Ents- Shepherds of the forestBalrog.png
 * Dwarves- Short folk who dwell under mountains
 * Hobbits- The peaceful folk of the Shire
 * Horse- A suitable mount
 * Men- Mortal humans
 * Orc- A foul race bred for evil
 * Troll- Large and unintelligent creatures
 * Uruk-Hai- Powerful mutant Orcs bred by Saruman
 * Warg- Wolves of evil
 * Balrogs - Servants of Morgoth

For information on how best to fight each of these mobs, look here.

Concerning Structures

 * Angmar Tower- Ruins of evil
 * Dol Guldur Tower- Its looks are fearsome enough
 * Dunlending Hill Fort- Dunlending strongholds
 * Dwarven House- The doors are visible only at night
 * Dwarven Mine- Better than abandoned mineshafts
 * Elven Treehouse- Homes of the Galadhrim Elves
 * Gondor Fortress- Contains a beacon of Gondor to call for aid or to entertain pyromaniacs
 * High Elven Hall- A grandiose Greek-like haven
 * Hobbit Hole- Home sweet home for halflings and gluttons
 * Mordor Tower- Layer upon layer of Orcs
 * Near Harad Village- A stunning southern-style complex of houses, towers, bazaars, and fields
 * Rohan Fortress- Reenact the Battle of Helm's Deep here
 * The Pits- Experienced players only! Entrance to Utumno
 * Wood-Elven Tower- Strongholds of the Woodland Realm

Things to Avoid
Read here for a list of things that you shouldn't do in Middle-Earth.

Be Swift in Collecting All the Crafting Tables
The new crafting tables in the mod allow you to make stronger-than-average weapons and armor unique to each faction, so you would do well to collect all the ones available to you (you need at least +1 alignment for a specific faction to use their crafting table). The category page for all current crafting tables can be found here.

Collect From Hobbit Holes at the Beginning of Gameplay
As of Beta 13, your Ring Portal always spawn in the Shire. No doubt when you enter Middle Earth, you will see many, many Hobbit Holes spread across the land. The chests in these structures hold almost anything you might need at the beginning of your adventure, such as books (sometimes enchanted), string for bows, bottles, mugs, and lots and lots of food (unsurprising, since Hobbits eat about seven meals a day). Rumor has it that in Hobbit Holes with both expensive chandeliers (gold or silver made) and expensive flooring (stone or clay bricks), you can find a chest containing valuables under the rug in the foyer. Hobbit Holes have doors. You don't have to break the windows when entering/leaving them. If you want to be good that is.

Fort Besieging Tips
If you want to know how to lay siege to an enemy fort and take it over, click here.

Fort Defense Tips
If you want to know how to build a stronghold against enemy players and their armies, click here. Try adding some Defensive Traps to your fort for better protection against your enemies.

Enemies (Excluding Spiders and Wargs) can Open Doors
Unlike in vanilla Minecraft, running straight into your house with an enemy on your back won't get the enemy off your back. Instead, it will simply open the door and walk right in to get you. The same can happen if you do not put iron bars or glass panes in your windows. If you do put glass or iron bars in your windows, though, enemies can't see you. They also cannot open iron doors, nor tunnel through walls (except for the bombardier, who can blow through walls, even though he never does this intentionally).

Get as Much Alignment as Possible
When you've found a faction that you like, try to get as much alignment with that particular faction as you possibly can. Besides from being able to use their crafting tables and not being attacked by that faction, getting lots of alignment with the particular faction gives you several other benefits; it allows you to trade with some NPC's, and to hire units. Getting higher alignment will make hiring units cheaper, too, so get alignment! A final benefit of getting a lot of alignment with that faction is the ability to get a shield for that faction, which doesn't offer any protection bonuses, but it sure looks cool!

With the addition of Mini-Quests, getting alignment has never been easier. If you want lots of alignment with a faction, make sure your alignment with that faction is 0 or higher, then talk to several NPC's. If those NPC's offer you a quest that involves killing units that you're going to have to kill anyway to get alignment for that faction, do not refuse it! For example if a soldier of Gondor asks you to kill spawn of Mordor, always accept it, even it he tells you to kill 100 enemy units. Try to get five "unit-killing" quests, then go ahead and start attacking enemy units. Once you've reached your quota with one of the quests, go back to the NPC that offered you the quest, and right-click him. He will offer you alignment and silver coins (which can come in useful for hiring units at a later time or for trading with an NPC). You can right-click him a second time and ask him for another quest, or ask another soldier. Using this method, you can effectively quintuple the amount of alignment you get per NPC slain.

Note that for every enemy that an NPC asks you to kill, you will get one alignment point and silver coin. For example if an Uruk-Hai wants you to kill 24 Rohirrim, he will give you 24 Isengard alignment and 24 silver coins as a reward.

Utilize Bronze
With the addition of the new alloy bronze into Middle Earth, the player can cut down on iron use. At first, the player may forget that a bronze pickaxe can mine all the same ores as iron. So why use your hard-earned iron for mining? It has other important uses such as alloying and armor making. Always go equipped into your mine with bronze picks instead if iron, as you can save your iron for more important uses.

Different Styles of Gameplay
These are some different ways to experience gameplay in Middle-Earth. This section will include tips on how to do things such as playing a nomadic game using The Lord of the Rings Mod, and instructions for some new gameplay possibilities that the new game mechanics of Middle-Earth have opened up.

Achievement Collector
This style speaks for itself. Basically, the goal is to try to collect as many achievements as you can without going to Creative Mode. A good way to achieve this is to go one biome at a time, starting with the Shire. Even though some achievements are for things you would be doing anyways such as mining and killing mobs, some are for things you wouldn't think of yourself, like reaching the ultimate alcohol tolerance. Using this gameplay style gives you a well-balanced experience of the mod.

To see a list of all achievements, go here.

Nomadic Experience
This is a style of gameplay in vanilla, but there are a few things to remember when trying it in Middle-Earth. When you're going to play a Middle-Earth nomadic game, it might be best to start the game in Creative Mode. This is so you can make a portal from square 1 without having to find gold in the Overworld first. Though as of Beta 25 you can spawn directly into middle earth by changing your World Type to "Middle Earth" (Don't worry, you can still go back to the over world by making a portal).

If you want a slightly easier playing experience, start out in the Overworld and make the ring portal as you would normally. By the time you've crafted a gold ring you'll probably have enough iron to make a suit of armor, which should make things easier in Middle-Earth.

Once you get to Middle-Earth, just pick a direction and start walking (try going east like Bilbo). The big difference between gameplay in Middle-Earth and gameplay in vanilla is this: You are no longer aiming to defeat the Ender Dragon. Mini Quests have been added, and though they're a good way to raise your alignment, you'll still have to set another goal. A good objective for this style of gameplay at the moment is to just raise your alignment as high (or as low) as you can by fighting enemies, or simply try to make your way to Mordor in one piece.

Hostile Take-over
To play this style, you simply kill every mob you see, good or evil. This makes running blindly through battle much easier, not having to know what you are hitting. However, with this gameplay style, you don't get many of the alignment benefits, and everyone will see you as a target, so this style should mostly be played by hardcore Minecraftians.

Barbarian Gameplay
For this type of gameplay you can join a rather rugged faction (Rangers or Dunland) and support them or you can go it alone. Basically what you do is go to a peaceful biome (Shire) or a more scarcely populated place (Trollshaws and Lone-lands) and raid camps, towers, and houses for loot. You can take troops along with you and start massacring the inhabitants or burn and destroy structures.

Open War Gameplay
In this style of gameplay, you take advantage of many of the new mechanics in the mod, especially those of alignment and unit hiring. There are several subtly different ways to play this style, but the objective is the same:  Kill as many enemies as you can while looting structures and maintaining an army of soldiers ! There might not be all that much building or mining in this style of gameplay but there will surely be a lot of fighting, so you might want to try counting the number of enemies you kill in each battle like Legolas and Gimli do.

For more info on the Open War style of gameplay, see this page.

Settling Gameplay
This form of gameplay comprises of picking a biome, settling there, and basically continuing your normal minecraft existence. In this type of existence the new blocks, units and mechanics are not to be disregarded, e.g. building a castle out of Gondor bricks or surrounding your home with guards, the basic concept of this gameplay style is still firmly based in the original Minecraftian concept of surviving and building.

Pacifism
If you want to refrain from fighting at all, check out this wiki page. It tells you how to play the mod and become friends with all factions.

Exploration
This type of gameplay is similar to the Nomadic Experience, but instead of wandering aimlessly, you set up multiple bases and resupply checkpoints. Here you try to visit as much as possible, and set up a base in as many places as possible. Wether you do so for fun or to collect resources easier, that's your choice. A good idea is to set up a base in each biome using the local style. You could also do the builds in the hierarchy of the species. (which is to say, Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, and finally, Orcs.) A good idea for good players is to head to Lindon first, Then Lothlorien. Set up a main base that you can return to. Put storage space in the main base for all the items you will collect on your travels.