How to Customize Your Quickslot Bar in Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online is an outstanding Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that takes place in the rich and distinctive world created by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The game has progressed over the years and is constantly adding new and wonderful lands to explore and conquer. It's well worth a try if you have not played it before!

As your avatar progresses, it earns new skills. Those skills can be slotted to a "Quickslot Bar." Early in your character's life, there may be only two or three skills to choose from, but many more will add up as you gain levels.

Very soon, you will find the need to add new Quickslot Bars to the user interface, allowing easy access to the most common skills.

Note: Read to the very bottom of the article for a great tip on how to customize the LOTRO user interface.

The first step to customize the Skill Bars is to open the options panel.

To do that, choose System and then Options.

Click on the picture to the right to enlarge it to full size.

Next, choose the option "Quickslots" on the right hand side.

For each skill bar, there are three choices to select.

1. Dock Bar: The game developers made it nice for us to keep these nice and neat. If "docked" is chosen, the bars will stack up nicely against each other. If it is unselected, it is movable around the screen.

2. Always Show: Toggle this on to keep the bar visible at all times. Uncheck it and it hides until you select the hot-key for that bar.

3. Make Horizontal: This one is easy. Check the box and the bar is horizontal. Uncheck the box and it becomes vertically oriented.

In the picture to the right, the skills are undocked and vertically oriented. Please note the options selected that allow for this user interface.

Click on the picture for full size.

Keeping the bars docked and horizontal is the most common setting in the game, but many characters will be easier to control with different set-ups.

In particular, my Minstrel is much easier to manage when I separate the bars. I group the damage skills together with War Speech for when I am soloing.

On the flip side, when I am running in support mode and healing larger groups of players, I want my healing skills and buffs grouped together. I seldom use damage-inducing skills when I am with larger fellowships. I do find that adding Cry of the Valar to my healing bar helps a fellowship reduce the number of attackers.

Hunters also benefit by separating the Quickslot Bars. Those wayfaring skills accumulate quickly, and it is nice to keep them grouped together and off to the side of the screen. It allows for a cleaner user interface for the damage-creating skills.

If you are anything like me, you will want the interface set up in a manner that will make your gameplay very efficient.

The default positions of notifications and your bags may not cut it! That leads to my favorite trick! Learn how to change the location of virtually everything on your desktop with a few easy clicks!

1) Type in "Ctrl+\" to unlock your user interface. It will look similar to the picture on the right.
2) Drag the Quickslot Bar to your favored location. I preferred it to be set vertically and to the far right of the screen.
3) Now, lock the UI and you're all set!