LotRO Intro to Gear

I have been playing LotRO for a year and I am in no way an expert, this is a very simplified quick guide for someone that may be fresh to 150 due to a level boost token you received from one of the new expansions or maybe you have been away from the game a while. The guide will be written as if you have just leveled up from a boost token and you are unboxing all the level up crates.

Level 150 Boost

Character Build:
Before you start equipping your new gear, you will want to decide on your character build, be it Yellow, Blue or Red. The abilities you get from those build choices will directly affect some of the choices you make when equipping your character. There are many great builds available on the internet that players have put a lot of thought into, so it is a safe way to get started.

Gear Crate:
The first crate is a full set of Purple Rarity “Item Level: 508″Level-UP Gear. There should be a piece for each slot on your charter sheet “C”.

Legendary Crates:
The next set of crates include your Main Weapon and a Item slot. Each of the Legendary Items will have several empty sockets. These items are both Orange Rarity which is the highest rarity of Legendary and are upgraded as you level. (lvl 151 and 156)

Notice your Legendary Items/Weapon says “Item Level: 549” and further down the sockets will all be empty, but once you place the (#15) Traceries into them it will increase each of the slot levels to “L-500/549“.

Color Quality/Rarity
A note on Quality of Items. The color of the background or outline of the square will quickly tell you quality of the item. (Legendary=Orange, Incomparable=Light Blue, Rare=Purple, Uncommon=Yellow). The level boost gear are all purple and are of rare quality. The Orange and Blue versions of gear will usually have their own empty sockets that you can enhance in the same manner as your Legendary Weapon and Item.

To fill all these empty sockets, drag your item on to the Flame icon, then you can drag each tracery onto the empty socket or replace an existing.

Crates of Traceries:
The other crates will have Traceries that increase the power of your Legendary Items. Each Legendary Item you start with will have a single “Heraldric” socket and then several “Word of Mastery”, “Word of Power” and “Word of Craft” sockets. Each of these Traceries will have a 15 in the corner, meaning they are Tier 15. At player level L151, you will start getting Tier 16 versions.

Before inserting the “Word of Mastery” traceries into your weapons, these are class specific traceries and depending on which color build you have chosen they will enhance specific abilities. So do not insert a tracery for an ability you do not have.

Unused traceries could be used for a secondary set of weapons if you create a second build color or broken down into “Ancient Scripts”

Crate of Enchantments:
Enchantments increase the power of each of the Sockets. The traceries you just entered made the Socket a (L-500/549) and placing enchantments on it will increase this to its max, L-501/549 to L-502/549, etc. However, an important note, don’t add any enchantments to your item when you are fresh level 150, because at level 151 you can upgrade (Forge) the legendary items and it will allow you to replace the traceries that have the small “#15” in the corner with ones that have “#16”. Placing the “#16” enchantments into the socket upgrades it instantly to “L-550/555“. So if you spend any enchantments that increase it from 500-549 will be wasted, and you are probably better off selling them for coin.

Level 151-159

Once you have your character set with all of its 150 starter gear, you will need to get to level 160 to participate in the LFF endgame instances. There are several ways of doing that, but one of the fastest would be doing the 100s of available Missions. You can use the Mission Stable masters to jump around the world and get various deeds for completing all the different ones along with some weekly quests.

Forge: Upgrading your Legendary Weapons
At player lvl 151
After the Legendary Item Upgrade happens the “Item Level” becomes “555“, Which increases all the sockets from L500/549 to L550-555.

At player level 156
With Update 46.1 (2026-04-2) you can reforge your legendary items again, which increases the Socket/Slot levels, they become a 550/560 (enchantments increase this to its max).

Level 160

Congratz you have reached the new level cap! Before you start jumping into the instances, you will want to be sure all of your gear has been upgraded from 150 to 160. You can visit the Auction House to replace the lower level gear, or spend some embers you may have collected from your alt, or start running Mission Delvings and spend the Delving Writs that are awarded.

More on Traceries
Adventuring will award you with random new traceries of various qualities but they may not fit your specific build. Some of you might even want to have multiple builds and need different types of traceries to be effective. To find the perfect traceries you will need to visit Rivendell. You can spend your collected Ancient Scripts with the scholars of Archives of Rivendell (2nd floor, north room under the stairs). There you can purchase new Traceries and Enchantments for your legendary gear, as well as an additional set of Legendary weapons for an additional build.

Legendary Item XP (shift-i)
As you level up and collect XP you will also receive Legendary XP, this will be where a large chunk of traceries are awarded and bound to your account. Note the Legendary XP awards reset every couple months, so be sure to claim your awards as you go.

Other Resources:
LotRo Endgame – New Outriders A guide of what you should be familiar to run endgame content.
LotRO Delving and Endgame – New Outriders Delving with the Guild.

Last Update 2026-03-05 (post game update 47)