Newbie Guide to LOTRO Monsterplay

1) What is Monsterplay?
Monsterplay is player-versus-player combat in Lord of the Rings Online (LOtrO), but playing on the evil side (creeps). You fight against the Free Peoples (freeps). It is restricted to one area, the Ettenmoors, which is located north of Rivendell and only reachable by a stable ride. It differs from PvE (player-versus-environment) in the fact that it is not-scripted, so there is a lot of unexpected action. I like to think of it as what roleplay is for people who like stories, but then for players who like ingame action/fighting - this is where you decide the combat plot. One warning: since battles can get rather intense with lots of player characters involved, so you might experience a lot of lag when playing on an old computer.

2) What is the difference between playing on freepside and creepside?
Playing freepside is advised at the endgame level (lvl 60+). You take all you hard earned PvE equipment along, together with all your skills, traits and so on - so if you want, you can start Ettenmoors gameplay rather equipped. As a freep you get to experience the non-scripted combat and you earn renown points by killing creep player characters. If you gain enough renown points, you advance in rank, getting you a new title. At certain ranks, you can buy equipment, of which the black horse is the most wanted (available at Rank 9 Glory).

If you play on creepside: there is actually work to do!
You will start as a lvl 65 Monster player, but rather weak (you have a green ring on your toon icon). By making rank, you actually gain strength, morale, power, new skills, new resistances, new traits and even some new items. You make rank by collecting infamy points, which are gained by killing freep player characters. As you make rank and buy the new skills, you will get stronger (getting a blue ring, a red ring and later you can get an elite sign). By completing quests and killing NPCs/player characters, you can earn destiny points (DP), which are used to buy new skills and traits. These are the same destiny points you get as you make level with you main toon - and you share them between all your toons.

3) How to start Monsterplay
To start doing Monsterplay you have to create a creep character from your LOTRO character screen, by pressing the "Monster Play" button. You need to have a character at at least lvl 10 to do this. You will have the option of creating the following monsters:

1) reaver - Savage, brutal and deadly, the Reaver is at home on the field of battle - and few places else. His swift attacks and ability to dual-wield weaponry make him a formidable foe. When pressed, the Reaver is capable of tapping the strength of his blood to become a frenzied warrior who rains blows on his enemy with frightening speed.
Primary Role: Damage (Burst)
Secondary Role: Damage (Sustained), Debuff

2) weaver - Cunning, patient and fearsome, the Weaver's home is not within the heart of the battle, but rahter at its edge, where she can best employ her strengths and shield her weaknesses. With poison, clinging webs and the ability to burrow beneath the ground, the Weaver is a mistress of woe who skulks the fringes of battle.
Primary Role: Crowd Control
Secondary Role: Damage (Over-time), Surprise

3) blackarrow - Accurate, vindictive and violent, the Blackarrow employs the bow against foes, striking from behind the front-line warriors of Angmar's army. Employing fire and deadly gifts of shadow from Angmar, the Blackarrow is a potent foe who drives his arrows deep into his targets' midst.
Primary Role: Ranged Damage
Secondary Role: Ranged Damage (Over-time), Crowd Control

4) warleader - On the battlefield, the Warleader shines as a warrior on the front line and inspiration to his allies. Through mocking, humiliation and force of will, the Warleader can inspire the meekest of troops to greatness. His fearsome howls augment his strong arm and shield to make his blows all the more deadly.
Primary Role: Heal, Buff
Secondary Role: Tanking

5) stalker - At home in a pack or stalking the woods silent and stealthy. the Stalker strikes suddenly and does not offer escape to his foe. Strong jaws, hardened claws and fierce determination drive the Stalker, making him on of the most feared opponents in battle.
Primary Role: Stealth/Scout, Surprise
Secondary Role: Damage (Burst), Debuff, Limited Crowd Control

6) defiler - The orc defiler has learned of plagues and venoms, and can put them to use restoring the forces of the dark lord or bring low the free people.
Primary Role: Healing
Secondary Role: debuff, crowd control

As you see, some class characteristics resemble PvE classes, though there certainly are differences. Choose the class you like, you can have 6 monster characters at the same time (not intervening with your 7 PvE character slots). Basically, the only thing you have to configure is a name - there is no option to change appearance.

4)The World of Ettenmoors
Enter the world of Ettenmoors and play! You will spawn in Gramsfoot, which is the creep base. This base is protected by a "Wall of Death", meaning your green ring is safe there (no freep can enter the base).
Now let me try to explain what Ettenmoors looks like and talk you through some common abbreviations.


Map of Ettenmoors and its settlements

The creep base is in the North-West and is called Gramsfoot ("Grams") and the freep base is Glan Vraig (GV) is located in the South-East; they are no-go areas for the other side.
There are 3 main keeps, around which most big fights evolve: Tol Ascarnen (TA) on the island in the center; Lugazag (Lug) in the North-West, quite close to Grams; Tirith Rhaw (TR), in the East, quite close to GV.

Next to the 3 keeps there are two minor camps: Lumbercamp (LC) in the South and Isendeep (Isen or ID) in the North.
The three keeps and LC/ID can be conquered by defeating the highest ranked NPC in the location: the Captain-General in freep bases and the Tyrant in creep bases. Ofcourse player characters will aid the NPCs in defending the keeps. If you open the map, you can see which bases are "red" (marked with the eye - owned by creeps) or "blue" (marked with a tree - owned by freeps). TR and Lug both have a graveyard (GY) nearby. If someone dies and the keep is controlled by your side, you'll respawn at that nearby graveyard instead of the GY in Gramsfoot (creeps) and Glan Vraig (freeps).

Next to the 5 conquerable camps/keeps, there are 4 non-conquerable locations which are important in questing and around which many fights evolve. The two most important ones are Orc Camp (OC), just south of TA, west of the river and Elf Camp(EC), also just south of TA, but East of the river. When there are no big raids going on, this is the place to find some action. Furthermore, defeating the highest ranked NPC in the enemy camp (EC), marshall Ann, gets you 2,000 destiny points. Both locations (OC and EC) are close to the two bridges of Tol Ascarnen - they can be conquered by taking the flag in the middle of it.

Two other non-conquerable bases are Dar-Gazag (DG), the most westward location which belongs to creeps, and Ost Ringdyr (Ost), the most eastward location which belongs to freeps. DG is important because many quests start from there. Furthermore, both locations can be attacked by the other side. By defeating the Tyrant/Captain General in those locations, you get access to 2 relics. These relics have to be carried to the other side (so from Ost to DG) to earn a buff for all creeps or freeps. You might have noticed a buff icon when playing PvE, earning you 5% extra XP - that one appears if freeps get both relics.

Next to those locations you have several Outposts (OP) - by conquering those outposts by defeating the NPCs, you get 2,000 destiny points. If creepside has 2 outposts, the Delving of Fror (DoF) is accessible: a huge underground elite NPC Dungeon where spirit stones drop - these stones are traded for high-level traits and items. The creep entrance of the Delving of Fror is close to the entrance of Dar-Gazag.

Two quest locations are Grothum in the North (creep camp, giving quests) and Hoarhallow in the South-West. This is a Hobbit Village in Ettenmoors - by killing NPCs there you can do quests and make money.

5) How to start playing Creep
So how to start with your green ring Monster toon?

a) buy new skills with destiny points: Loose the Green Ring!
You can find the skills at the Monster Player trainer Malavin at Gramsfoot. You can already buy new skills at rank 0. You need destiny points to buy them.

There are 4 types of skills:
- active skills: these are combat buffs and skills, comparable to those on your PvE character
- passive skills: armour, avoidance, damage, health, power and resistances. Every Rank unlocks new skills. Buying all passive skills at Rank 0 gets you a blue ring. If you buy all passive skills at Rank 2, you become a red ring creep. If you have bought all passive skills at Rank 8, you get an elite sign (red eye) in your portrait. Buying R0 skills is recommended as soon as you start to play, since they'll make you a blue ring (if you buy the passive skills), which makes you relatively less targeted when fighting. Greenrings are considered "easy renown" for freeps.
- traits: there are 3 types: corruption, class and race traits. Corruption traits determine the build of your toon: for example: trade power for morale, increase damage for health or upgrade resistances. Class traits get you class specific advantages, like cooldowns on skills, extra abilities (e.g. more stealth, greater run speed). Racial traits are available from rank 5 on. They can be bought at your race specific trait trader (you need spirit stones from the Delving of Fror instance to buy them).
- appearance: the only way to change your looks is to buy a new skin at the monster player trainer (you can see the skins here)

b) Get more destiny points: Questing
Buy skills! But... you need destiny points to do that. You can use the destiny points you gained with all your PvE characters, but you will need tens of thousands of them. The way to earn them is to do the repeatable Ettens quests. They give you between 125 - 2,000 destiny points. The ones that give 2,000 points are the conquer the keep quests (available from creep NPCs in the tent in Grams), the capture an outpost quest (available from War-Tyrant Akulhun in Grams) and defeat Marshall Ann (available from the Tyrant in Orc Camp). For most quests you need to gather items, like troll stone slabs, hobbit feet, elf ears, dwarf beards etc. The most common starting quests are the "get slug-meat" quests from the slug pits near grams.

c) Get your Ettens Maps
You will get a one hour cooldown map to Gramsfoot when you start (you will find it in your inventory). You can get a 6-part quest from the Orc n front of the War-Tyrant in grams to get a 1-min cooldown map for grams. This quest ("Gift from the War Tyrant") Involves visiting 6 locations (Grothum, Dar-Gazag, Tol Ascarnen, Lugazag, Tirtih Rhaw and Grimwood Lumber camp). You should complete these as soon as possible.

The second type of maps allow you to travel quickly to ettens. There are maps to Lugazag, Tol Ascarnen, Tirith Rhaw, Isendeep and Grimwood. You can earn them by completing quests given at that specific location. Inspect your quest log to see which quests are listed under which location.
For crude maps (30m shared map cooldown) you need to finish 10 quests; for poor maps (10 min shared map cooldown) you need to finish 25 quests and for good maps (5 min cooldown, not shared between the maps) you need 50 quests.

A map of Ettenmoors, with the locations of the crude, poor and good map port sites.

Be sure to map to grams before you log off - next time you log, the graveyard (respawn circle) might be in enemy hands!

d) Make money to buy potions
If you want Morale and Power pots, or resistance pots: you can buy them in Gramsfoot at the Quartermaster. You need silver coins to buy them - so you need to earn some coin first. Killing Hobbits in Hoarhallow or other NPCs in ettens give you gold. You can also sell items you get from NPCs, but most of them are quest items (but not hoarhallow ale, for example).
The most important potions you can buy are the anti-stun and anti-root pots. Freep player characters have a lot of crowd control going on, and using a pot to free you from e.g. a loremaster stun or a hunter trap is a matter of life and death.

e) Go and hunt!
Although many players go solo because of the high amount of infamy gain, the nicest way to experience ettenmoors is coordinated group play. There are raids (up to 24 players). Open raids can be found in the social panel --> grouping --> open groups (tab on bottom!). Select an open raids and click the join button. A join request will be sent to the raid leader.

Be sure to have your audio enabled.
A special form of raids are Wargpacks (WP) - these are raids exclusively for stealthed wargs, who do surprise attacks on freeps and who are the terror of the moors if you are caught in the middle of it.

f) Search for a creeptribe
Tribes are the equivalent of kinships on creepside. Sometimes large kinships have a creeptribe counterpart, which is only accessible to memebers of that kinship. There are various open creeptribes however. Depending on the profile of the creeptribe, they may require you to have a certain rank or have a certain amount of Ettenmoors maps before you can join.

Most players will use the /OOC chat as the main ettenmoors chat.

g) Upgrade your corruption traits and get more health, damage or power.

From rank 1 on, you can buy corruption traits at Monster trainer Malavin in Gramsfoot. These are the rank 1 versions of the corruption traits, like "Health for Power" rank 1 (+5% extra power for -5% morale). You can get the rank 2 versions of these corruption traits (e.g. applying +10% extra power/morale for -5% morale/power) at the Core Corruptions Trader in Gramsfoot. You will need Spirit stones from the dungeon instance "The Delving of Fror" for them, the Dull - and the Glimmering Spirit Stones. The entrance to the Delving of Fror is near Dar Gazag (its doors are right of the Dar Gazag main entrance, where the trolls are), and it is only accessible when 2 outposts are in creep hands.

These advanced traits allow you to e.g. increase your morale pool by 25% (by equipping power for health R2 + damage for health R2 + power for health R1). Please note that you need not to equip the R1 version of the corruption to be able to equip the R2 corruption. You can find examples of corruption builds in class specific guides (below).

i) Additional class information

A companion to the Warg Stalker

6) Useful information

a) Infamy

The amount of infamy you get in a kill is dependent on a few factors: the rating of a freep, the amount of players in your fellowship (you share infamy with them) and the amount of players who do damage to the freep. Furthermore, certain bonuses may apply (e.g. when the relics are in creep posession). I found the following formula and explanation on http://baos.alanlouie.com :

Infamy

=

Freep Rating 10 * % Damage Done Number of Group Members + Rating Bonus

The number of group members is equal to everyone in your fellowship or raid, regardless where they are close to you. Therefore, if raid/fellowship members are not within infamy award distance (which appears to be around 100m), there is a waste of infamy. Important: If the number of Group Members exceeds 12, the # Group Members is set to 12. Therefore if you have more than 12, the amount of total infamy gained for everyone in the raid begins to exceed that of a group of 12, so it is beneficial if you work in big groups, since the total yield of infamy will be up to 2x the normal yield.

Rating Bonus is a multipler starting at 1.0 and increasing depending on your rating (appears to be an addition of 0.01 per 200 rating over 1000, e.g. 1400 rating would be a multiplier of 1.02).

% Damage Done is the overall percentage of damage done to the target from your entire group/raid from when it was initially tapped to its death, including all healing. Example: If a 2000 morale freep, after healing, took 2000 damage from one creep and 1000 from another creep before it was defeated, the 2000 damage creep (or his group) would gain 2/3 of the infamy.

Additionally there is another rating multiplier on top of this. 3% is added if the relics are held by the creeps and 2% is added if the three primary keeps are red (and the relics are held).

b) Rating

Rating increases for each kill and decreases for each kill. The amount it increases/decreases depends on the rating of the freep killed as well as damage done. The rating is only important to determine the amount of infanmy you gain from a freep. As of Vol II, book 7 stars have been cancelled.

c) % Completed

On the login screen for Monster Play, you will see a % Completed by each slot that you have a creep for. It represents the amount of traits/skills which have been bought with destiny points. It begins at 0% which represents no passives, no actives, and no traits purchased. 100% means that for that creep you have purchased every passive, active, and every trait, whether you use that trait or not.

d) Warband Manouvres

Warband manouvres are the equivalent of Fellowship manouvres. Especially Wargs and Spiders have some skills that can trigger warband manouvres ( Tendon shred or Crippling Bite + Pounce or Smothering Webs).
The amount of damage you do with WB manouvres depends on your class. Fell Spirit's Terror is the only manouvre which can be cast from range for most classes. However, Blackarrows and Spiders have the ability to cast WB manouvres from range, as opposed to a 2 mtr distance for melee classes.

The icons have the following effect:

	Fell Spirit's Terror	Ranged damage + Morale transfer: Damage 161.7 Morale, Recovers 517.5 Morale
	Spider's Venom	Damage + DoT: 40-46 Common, 43 Common every 4s for 20s
	Troll's Brutality	Damage: 313-387 Common
	Wight's Rot	Damage + Power transfer: 40-46 Common, Drains 194 Power. Recovers 323.4 Power, 85 Power every 2s for 10s

Interesting combinations (courtesy of http://baos.alanlouie.com ):

2 players:

Name	Sequence	Damage	DoT	Power Drain	Other
Plague Bearer	GY	1000	78
Poisoned Blades	YG	1000	60

3 players:

Name	Sequence	Damage	DoT	Power Drain	Other
Burning Terror	YPG		60	600
Corrupted Blade	RGY	1000	60	600
Corruptions of the Spirit	GPG	2000	95
Festering Wound	YPY			1100
Fevered Wound	GRY	3000	95
Rotting Wound	YRY	2000			Restores 152 power every 2s for 10s
Sick with Fear	PYP			1100	75% Power and Morale Regen
Wounding Terror	PGP		60	600

4 players:

Name	sequence	Damage	DoT	Power drain	Other
Festering Strike	YPYR				Restores 220 Power every 2s for 10s
Venomous Strokes	GYGR	3000	53	600-700

e) Ranks and Infamy

New skills and traits can be bought when you make rank. The ranks are based on the amount of infamy you collect. You earn a new creepside title when you make rank.

Rank	Creep Title		Infamy Required
0	(none)		0
1	Tracker		500
2	Scout		1,250
3	Skirmisher		2,750
4	Fighter		5,750
5	Soldier		14,750
6	Sentry		33,500
7	Chief Guard		71,000
8	Chief Warrior		146,000
9	Taskmaster		258,500
10	Lieutenant		408,500
11	Commander		633,500
12	Chieftan		1,008,500
13	High Chieftan		1,608,500
14	Overlord		2,508,500
15	Tyrant		3,708,500

Furthermore, getting certain numbers of killing blows (KBs) will get you specific titles:

 

KBs required	Title
10	Tormentor
500	Black Dog
2,500	Harvester of Sorrow
10,000	Slayer of Light
25,000	Hand of Doom
?	Bane of the West
?	Herald of Darkness

f) What to sell and what to keep?

There are many items dropping from NPCs in Ettenmoors that are used for quests. The ones that are safe to sell are:

• All bear items except Morningthaw Hides and Haunches
• All slug items except Slug meat
• All fellclaw items
• Untreated and Exceptional Hides
• All drake items except for Drake Sinew
• Darktide drops
• Hoarhollow Ale

g) Diminishing returns

Diminishing returns are decreases in efficacy of crowd control spells when applied multiple times in a row. In the past, your creep could be chain-stunned by loremasters and other freep classes with crowd control. To balance this, Turbine introduced "diminishing returns" in PvMP, starting with the release of Siege of Mirkwood (Vol II, book 9). All crowd control effects (fears, roots, (conjunction) stuns, and dazes) are on the same application counter (45 seconds). This means that for purposes of diminishing returns in PvMP (and in PvMP ONLY), each application of any crowd control effect is counted against the duration of the type of crowd control.

• Roots/Dazes

  • First Application = 50% of the root/daze duration
  • Second Application = 25% of the root/daze duration
  • Third - Ninth Application = 5% of the root/daze duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the root/daze will no longer affect the target

• Stuns

  • First Application = 100% of the stun's duration
  • Second Application = 50% of the stun's duration
  • Third Application = 25% of the stun's duration
  • Fourth - Ninth Application = 1 second stun duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the stun will no longer affect the target.

• Fears (please note that this applies only to crowd control fears - this does not apply to debuffs with resistance type: fear)

  • First Application = 100% of the fear's duration
  • Second Application = 50% of the fear's duration
  • Third Application = 25% of the fear's duration
  • Fourth - Ninth Application = 1 second fear duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the fear will no longer affect the target.
• Conjunction Stuns
  • First Application = 100% of the conjunction stun's duration
  • Second Application = 75% of the conjunction stun's duration
  • Third Application = 50% of the conjunction stun's duration
  • Fourth Application = 25% of the conjunction stun's duration
  • Fifth - Ninth Application = 1 second conjunction stun duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the conjunction stun will no longer affect the target.