First LOTRO fellowship

A big day – a red letter day in LOTRO for me. I created my first Fellowship and had a crack at a quest, Villains in the Vale. To start with, having hung around Nogland, I decided to simply ask if anyone wanted to join a Fellowship.

A LoreMaster called Lister replied he did, so I stumbled through the set up of the quest (more on how to set up your first fellowship in a minute) with Shadows of Angmar manual in one hand, the mouse in the other, typing into the chat with my nose. (OK, not, but it was pretty hard, while being attacked to answer the companion as well as figure it all out.)

Things did not go too well. Lister as a spell caster and myself as a Hunter were basically both ranged attackers and so after a quick go, we found ourselves back at the re-spawn point. For MMO newcomers, you might have wondered what happens when you die in Shadows of Angmar. Essentially you get teleported to the nearest safe point and you start again with a minor penalty on your character for 10 minutes.

Anyway, we decided that we needed another member, preferably a fighter (or tank). Back to Nogland where we accosted an elf who vanished offline when we asked if she'd like to join our Fellowship (I raised the possibility it was the hat that my Elf was wearing and he agreed she could just have been too fashion conscious to join us.)

The first fellowship was a mess of typos, but fun

In the end, a somewhat bemused Hammy asked why I hadn't added him to the Fellowship and explained  my ineptitude. It turns out LOTRO is much more user friendly than I had given it credit for.

The easiest way to add a person to a Fellowship in Shadows of Angmar, is to click on the character in the game, then right click on the portrait that appears, select Fellowship from the context menu and then Invite.

The invitee can then Confirm and join or decline.

The three of us set off again and battled through to the chief, just to have another group kill him just ahead of us so we couldn't complete Villains in the Vale. We could have hung around and tried again, but Hammy was eager for action and we followed him into an ill advised fight against some, well actually all, of the goblins. In the world.

They won.

Anyway, it was a reasonably pleasant introduction to the social side of MMO gaming, but I realise that I need to read up on loot sharing and chat protocol. At least the people I played with didn't seem to mind too much that I was clearly a clueless idiot leading the Fellowship. So my advice to LOTRO newbies – don't be shy – just shout out if you're looking for a helping hand on a quest, and be upfront with other gamers that you're new to it. They're likely to treat you well and help you along.

EDIT: Having played quite a few more fellowships now, I think it's worth pointing you to my post on what makes an ideal LOTRO fellowship.

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