Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor ?

[JudgeDredd]

its not that big of a deal. you're going to lose on occasion and they will get stronger, but you get stronger too. also, keep in mind that they are fighting and losing to each other too. don't get overwhelmed by all the missions. just focus on one at a time. i was lost at first too and kept getting my ass kicked. i was picking fights with everyone at first. you have to use stealth. sneak around and be selective about who you engage. try not to get distracted by all the side missions. do a few of the story missions at first because they unlock some of your special powers and abilities, some of which tip the balance in your favor!

lol - that's exactly what I've been doing

[JudgeDredd]

Don't give up hope JD.  Yes the game is very overwhelming at first because there is a lot going on all at once.  Here are some tips that should hopefully orient you in the right direction.

1.  On the map of the world look for yellow icon's.  Those denote the missions to complete in order to advance the story.  The story is purposely fuzzy at first but as it develops you'll learn more.

2.  The red icon missions are meant to weaken Sauron's army by targeting individual captains.  Don't worry about them leveling up to 15 or more.  At first you are going to be weak and not have much skill so to defeat these bad guys try a stealth approach or try shooting them from afar with your bow.

3.  To use drain you must be near a target.  The target can be either an Uruk or a Caragor.  Stealth is key here because if they see you you'll have to fight them and any of their buddies making draining a tough job to do.  As you drain your target is helpless but so are you.

4.  You have two skill trees to take care of.  One where you need to earn points that you get by killing captains and warchiefs the other tree that needs you to earn 'money points' to spend on the skills.  The first tree where you spend points on to level up deals with combat skills mostly.  The second tree is mostly attributes that passively work for you during battle. 

In the beginning the first batch of story missions are fairly easy to get out of the way.  Then you must spend some time roaming the map looking for random things to do in order to level yourself up a bit before taking on your first story driven major mission which you will learn about fairly soon.  Hope this helps.  Trust me, once you figure the game out it becomes addictive very fast.  You'll want to race through and finish the story which is definitely entertaining like Farcry 3 was but not memorable like the Bioshock series of stories.

Thanks - but I wasn't giving up...just confused with all these different missions and places. I actually really like it and the mechanics are pretty nifty...I'm just confuzzled and overwhelmed a bit.

I think I get like this with most games - if my initial foray into it overwhelms me or confuses me, I sound like I've had enough when in fact I've just come out to vent.

[JasonPratt]

True, don't pick fights with everything at first.

Also, remember that elf-shot can be found for free on the map just lying around, too; the minimap will show any nearby.

Every time you die, all orc-strength missions on the map will be resolved; meaning a bunch of orcs are going to level up, and new orcs will start cycling in to take the place of any orc captains slain by you or by other captains. This is the main reason to be careful NOT TO DIE! (Most areas have helpful plants around which will heal most or all your wounds, and can be found on the minimap if you've reclaimed a tower already. Reclaim the tower first on entering any new region so you'll see the plants and elfshot on the mini.)

High level orc captains are invulnerable to many or even most attacks; but I don't recall ever seeing an orc, no matter how powerful, which didn't take damage from combat finishers, even if he was invulnerable to basic attacks (which I can't quite recall if I ever saw either. If so it was rare.) But you can earn yourself better abilities more quickly by killing off lesser captains who can be one-shotted in various ways.

If I'm going up against high level captains, first I'm going to check if he's vulnerable to stealth kills. Sometimes high levelers can still be one-shotted by a stealth kill; but if not I don't bother merely trying to damage that way. (It's much rarer for them to still be vulnerable to archery insta-kills, and I learned not to bother wasting arrows much on them if they have a retinue nearby.)

Second I check if he's invulnerable to being grabbed, because ideally I'd rather grab him after thinning out any nearby orcs and interrogate him: captains give more information than fellow-captain positions, they also give weakness and strength reports. Interrogations always end in a knife-kill which they cannot resist. (Until much later in the game when they can end in something more useful.)

If I don't think I can whittle him down to grab safely because of other orcs around, I'll check to see if he's invulnerable to stuns and/or jumpovers. Those unlock early, and there's an ability which combines them, too. Even orcs which are invulnerable to flurry attacks are only invulnerable to them from the front, so jumping over and releasing a flurry from behind is a great way to built up your hit chain quickly so you can try a combat finisher -- also the flurry itself will lead into its own combat finisher, leaving you with your hit-chain intact and able to launch a real combat finisher. Flipovers and/or stuns are the fastest way to kill a high level captain (except maybe explosions if you've unlocked that).

In the worst case scenario, if he happens to be immune to flipovers and also to stuns (and/or thus to flipover-stuns), and also somehow immune to regular attacks, just attack nearby orcs, possibly with a stun-flurry combo to build up your hit chain and then use the combat finishers on your target. Even if you haven't unlocked stuns or flurries yet (do flurries have to be unlocked...?) you can theoretically kill any captain by this method just by building a chain with basic attacks on his nearby flunkies and then hitting him with the combat finisher. That might take seven or eight times, but it can be done.

[Gusington]

^Good advice. I was also lost for the for 4-5 hours on what to do. But then things started to click. For elf-shot you need to hold the E key down to get all of it, IIRC. Don't give up, the game is worth learning.

[JudgeDredd]

Thanks Jason - a lot of good points there.

However - it's times like what just happened that frustrates me - and it could be a lack of understanding on my part - but I don't think so - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

So I saw an Uruk (Ork?) with the icon saying there was intel. There were shed loads of Uruk's around...so I crouch around taking them out one by one...starting with any archers. All good. The numbers dwindle and I make a slight error in judgment and jump down for a stealth kill but I'm noticed and the rest come after me. Now there's probably about 8. But I'm doing fine and my mouse is taking a battering...but they're dropping.

Eventually, I have taken them all out after 20 minutes of fighting...only for a Captain to show up. Now first off, there were NO captains around. Second, the one that turned up isn't even meant to be in that map "area".

So that's what's really pissed me off - I don't think I did anything wrong in that I checked to make sure no captains were around and I took out as many as I could stealthily....so I jumped early - but I fought my way through that melee only for a captain to be transported in...so how come?

Thoroughly pissed off with that...a level 12 captain is now 13 and for some other reason (presumably the in-fighting between them, I have no idea) another one (who has killed me a number of times) has been promoted to level 15!

All my abilities on the top row are complete and I need to kill captains to unlock the next row (I currently have 3 points waiting to be used but cannot use them) - but I'm not daft enough (now!) to take on a level 12 Captain.

So I'm stuck doing little missions because these captains keep turning up from nowhere (this is the second time I've noticed it - before that I wasn't really aware of captains, their locations and importance).

[JudgeDredd]

Still getting those Captains turning up. In one melee, I had 3 or 4!

BUT - I have learned to run away and also look at their weaknesses as suggested and it makes a difference. Running away and taking on again isn't a bad tactic I've killed several captains now and hundreds if not thousands of Uruks

10.5 hours over the weekend!

[JasonPratt]

Yep, RUNNING AWAY IS OFTEN YOUR BEST TACTIC!

In several areas, orcs will keep spawning in from adjacent areas once you start a fight, especially in or near strongholds. There will NEVER be an end to them, so eventually you've got to run. Captains will be drawn in from other portions of the map, too; and I've had times when three or four captains show up during a brawl. It's possible the game teleports them in, too, in order to convince you to move along and stop killing buttloads of orcs. I never specifically noticed that, but I didn't check to see how far off range any of them were.

Even though there are level 15 captains now wandering around, you should still be able to find lower-level captains by going to the army screen and choosing ones on the bottom row to hunt -- if they're still in silhouette, then interrogate someone.

You can also manually scan a captain when he's nearby by going into wraith mode and zooming in on him with... don't know the keyboard command, on a console controller it would be L3, pushing in on the left stick. There was always a reminder how to do it in that situation. NOTE THAT THIS DOES NOT REALLY PAUSE THE GAME! It just slows the game down a whole lot while you're in scan. I never left it in scan long enough to see if it would be a problem for me, but I do recall a sabretoothy thing smatting a captain I was scanning that way.

[JasonPratt]

By the way, one of my gifts for Christmas was Shadow of Mordor: actually the parents had ordered it for my birthday but it didn't arrive in time, so they just saved it for Christmas. I didn't know that, so a few days after my birthday I took it off the list and picked up the deluxe edition with a season pass off Steam, figuring that would keep anyone from ordering it for Christmas.

Anyway, they can send it back, maybe, for credit -- it's completely unopened. But if anyone wants to negotiate a trade, I'm putting it up temporarily!

(To clarify, this is the basic PC edition, with only one DLC -- I forget which, possibly not one released yet for general download -- not for a console.)

[Gusington]

Paying attention to weaknesses is key. Once you can take advantage of captains' weaknesses the game begins to flow and gets a lot more fun.

To get to that point a lot of running away will probably happen first, though :)

[JudgeDredd]

Paying attention to weaknesses is key. Once you can take advantage of captains' weaknesses the game begins to flow and gets a lot more fun.

To get to that point a lot of running away will probably happen first, though :)

Definitely weaknesses are great. For example, one of the ones who had beat me 3 times (because I stood toe to toe with him) I found out could be killed with a ranged shot to the head...so a careful aimed shot got me 10 power! Similar for others like susceptible to finishers.

A few are pretty useless though. Like one is scaredy of the flies...but I only know of one or two places where those hives are - and he's never there.

[JasonPratt]

^^ That's odd, because I typically found that those with environmental weaknesses could be found around the weakness.

Even so, flies are useless unless you're trying to pick off someone out of a group (or need to rescue someone). Though on the other hand, if you've unlocked the arrow impale skill or if you're clever in how to use the wraithrunning skill (which unlocks pretty early) you can use a captain's fear (from fire or from flies or whatever) to make him abandon his coterie where he's vulnerable to being whacked in various ways. Shoot his feet to grab him (unless he's invulnerable to being grabbed or shot), that kind of thing. About halfway through the game you can unlock a skill chain that allows you to teleport where you shoot wraitharrows, too. (They're called elf-shot, but I don't know why, they're like the ghosts of elf arrows.)

[Gusington]

I used the hives a couple of times pretty effectively IIRC...

[JudgeDredd]

^^ That's odd, because I typically found that those with environmental weaknesses could be found around the weakness.

Even so, flies are useless unless you're trying to pick off someone out of a group (or need to rescue someone). Though on the other hand, if you've unlocked the arrow impale skill or if you're clever in how to use the wraithrunning skill (which unlocks pretty early) you can use a captain's fear (from fire or from flies or whatever) to make him abandon his coterie where he's vulnerable to being whacked in various ways. Shoot his feet to grab him (unless he's invulnerable to being grabbed or shot), that kind of thing. About halfway through the game you can unlock a skill chain that allows you to teleport where you shoot wraitharrows, too. (They're called elf-shot, but I don't know why, they're like the ghosts of elf arrows.)

Maybe I just haven't noticed them around. Don't forget some of the captains seem to "teleport" in to my area. I've only unlocked 3 areas (towers) and of those, I've only cleared two, though I've discovered at least the location of maybe a dozen captains.

[JasonPratt]

^^ Oh, right, that would explain why they aren't near an environment you can use against them -- marching in and/or teleporting from other regions once a fight gets sufficiently going.

[W8taminute]

When you have a captain that has a fear of 'insert object here' that means that he's going to get scared and run.  He's not going to die of his fear but there is a percentage chance he's going to flee from the fight.  If he flees all you need to do is stay with him and cut him down once you reach him. 

Morgal flies can be used to great effect just like igniting a bonfire.  The rank and file orc will die easily from these disasters but not your hardened captains or warchiefs.  Hope this helps...