Hero's Guide - Destiny Points

In The Lord of the Rings Online, defeat is always temporary. As long as you are willing to press on and fight against the forces of evil, you continue to earn experience points and level up. Put another way, your character is destined for greatness.

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A well-timed boost of Morale, Power, or Armour gained by spending a few Destiny Points can make the difference between victory and defeat.


After level 10, your character also earns Destiny Points. Destiny Points aren’t considered a part of your characters’ skills or abilities, but are, instead, a pool of points you can spend on special perks.

Destiny Points represent not just your character’s fate to attain high levels of ability and participate in the legendary tales of Middle-earth, but your authority as a player to grant your character a few special advantages along the way. You can spend Destiny Points to nudge fate in your character’s favor, making it easier for him to fulfill his destiny as a hero of the Free Peoples—or you can spend them to empower foul monsters in service to the armies of Angmar.

The choice is yours.

The Basics of Destiny
Once your character has reached at least level 10, look at the mini-map in your user interface. On its upper-right edge appears a little button with two nested crescent-moon shapes in it. That’s the Destiny Point symbol. Click that to access your Destiny Wallet.

This brings up a small panel the displays your currently available Destiny Point total and a Spend Destiny button. Click that to bring up a panel listing the various perks you can buy. Each grants a different temporary bonus (explained in more detail later in this article) that costs a certain number of Destiny Points.
All the characters on your account tap into a single Destiny Wallet. When one of your characters earns you Destiny Points, it goes into the wallet shared by all of your characters and Monster Play creatures.



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Destiny Points are useful for Free Peoples characters, but they’re essential for training and empowering characters in Monster Play.


Destiny Points (DP), instead of Experience Points (XP), are the essential currency for improving monster characters in the Ettenmoors, the Player vs. Monster Player (PvMP) region. The more Destiny Points you earn with any of your Free Peoples characters in regular play or during PvMP action in the Ettenmoors, the more you have to spend on abilities for your Monster Play characters.

Getting Destiny Points
There are two main ways to earn Destiny Points: by leveling up your Free Peoples characters in normal play and by triumphing in PvMP quests and combat.

(You can also earn Destiny Points in Free Range Session Play as a chicken. See the Lorebook for tips.)


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Beginning at level 10, your character earns you 200 Destiny Points with each new level attained. It’s that simple.


Your reserve of Destiny Points grows automatically as you play. Free Peoples characters gain 200 Destiny Points each time they gain a new level, starting at level 10.


In the PvMP zone of the Ettenmoors, you can win Destiny Points through combat and questing, very much like how experience points are gained in normal play. Expect to earn anywhere from one to six Destiny Points for each common enemy defeated in the Ettenmoors, from slugs and bears to NPC soldiers. The actual points awarded are based on the enemy’s level. More formidable foes, like Elite Masters and Avengers, are worth 30 DP (or more!) if you’re fierce enough to face them in battle and fortunate enough to win. You get greater rewards for killing monster players or Free Peoples characters.

The Witch-king’s foul officers, stationed at Enemy-controlled fortresses in the Ettenmoors, dole out quests to Monster Play characters just as folk throughout Middle-earth bestow quests upon your heroic characters. Your monster character’s quests pay out in Destiny Points, though, instead of XP. Simple errands to slaughter and spread mayhem may offer rewards as small as 125 DP, while grand and fearsome missions to storm strongholds of the Free Peoples may grant rewards worth thousands of Destiny Points.

Perk Effects
For characters over level 10, Destiny Points buy temporary buffs called perks. Each bestows a short-term effect that makes your character quicker, tougher, more hopeful, or more efficient at earning XP.

Two perks, both available immediately at level 10, grant instant effects that are useful throughout the life of your character. The first, Accelerated Experience (cost: 250 DP), grants you an amount of Enhanced XP, temporarily increasing the experience points you earn for defeating enemies in combat. This works like rest XP, represented by a blue span in your XP bar. The second, Restoration (cost: 1,500 DP), removes the effects of Dread imposed by a recent defeat.

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The road goes ever on. Spend Destiny Points on a short-term speed boost to shorten your travel times when dashing about on an important quest or rushing to meet a waiting fellowship.


The Swiftness, Hope, and Recovery perks also become available at level 10. Each of these perks grants a flat bonus to your run speed, Radiance, or out-of-combat Morale and Power regeneration. Each is available at three different levels of potency—the more expensive versions of each perk simply increase the buff’s duration:

* Burst: Lasts 5 minutes, costs 50 DP
* Sustained: Lasts 15 minutes, costs 250 DP
* Continuing: Lasts 30 minutes, costs 1,000 DP



Other perks become available in different magnitudes over the career of your character. Resolve perks increase your maximum Morale, Vigour perks increase your maximum Power, and Fortitude perks enhance your armour’s effectiveness. The more expensive perks grant more substantial bonuses and last longer, but only characters of at least the appropriate level can buy them:

* Initiate: Minimum level 10, lasts 5 minutes, costs 125 DP
* Accomplished: Minimum level 20, lasts 15 minutes, costs 500 DP
* Experienced: Minimum level 30, lasts 30 minutes, costs 1500 DP
* Veteran: Minimum level 40, lasts 45 minutes, costs 3,000 DP



Every perk has a limited number of uses, in addition to its DP cost. Each type of perk, like Restoration or Vigour, is temporarily exhausted after five uses regardless of the magnitude of the perk bought. Uses refresh at the rate of one per day.

Destiny Points For Monsters
Your heroic characters, in normal play, gain an edge from Destiny Points. Monster Play characters depend on them.

Once your first character has reached level 10, you can create your first Monster Play character and enter the Ettenmoors as a bloodthirsty minion of the Dark Lord Sauron. No matter which of the Monster classes you select, your villainous new alter-ego character begins play equivalent to level 60, but without any of the skills or abilities it would have learned through a career of adventuring. The lessons your normal character would have learned from a trainer in exchange for an honorarium of coins, your Monster Play character must buy with Destiny Points.

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Destiny Points are the currency of advancement for Monster Play characters. Use them to raise your monster character’s traits, buy new skills, and even change your character’s appearance.



Monster Play abilities are streamlined for quick, action-packed play, so you don’t have to master a whole slew of new skills. Your Monster character’s core attributes, class skills, and even appearance can be customised by visiting a Monster Player Trainer NPC in the Ettenmoors and spending Destiny Points. Each class starts with a few skills built in and more ready to learn right away.

These things don’t come cheap. The least expensive skills and traits available for your class cost more than 1,000 DP, but there’s no rush. Take a few Monster Player classes out for a spin with their default skills and see what you like before you start advancing in your favorite class and investing your DP in the ruination of Hobbits and Elves.

Strategy For Free-Peoples
Get one character to level 60 in normal play, and you’ll have earned 10,000 Destiny Points along the way. Do you use them to make things easier on your next character as she pursues her own path to level 60? Do you turn them all in to a Monster Play Trainer in the Ettenmoors and storm boldly into PvMP play with a potent new Uruk warrior? There is no right answer. You can, however, avoid a few simple pitfalls by planning a little bit ahead. A 45-minute-long Morale buff can feel wasted if you spend a lot of those minutes crafting or browsing the Auction Hall, for example. Plan ahead.

Consider how your available uses interact with your available DP. A single use of Continuing Recovery boosts your out-of-combat Morale and Power regeneration for 30 minutes, but it costs 1,000 DP (that’s five levels worth!). You could get the same effect for the same length of time for half the DP cost by buying Sustained Recovery twice—provided you remember to buy it again when the first 15-minute duration runs out. The value of Continuing Recovery isn’t just that it lasts longer, it’s that all five uses in a row add up to a 150-minute duration! If you pace your perk usage, you can save a lot of Destiny Points.

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Confidence in one’s destiny can dispel doubt and fear. Lessen the sting of defeat with the Restoration perk, and get back into the fight.


Some players strive to maximize the value of their Destiny Points over the lifespan of their characters by hoarding them all for the most formidable battles or for Monster Play. Some players only dabble in the PvMP side of the game and so spend their Destiny Points casually, whenever they feel like it. Some players forget about Destiny Points altogether for a few levels only to click open their destiny wallet to find a thousands of points waiting for them.

If you find you need more, spend some time leveling up an alternate character on your account or questing in the Ettenmoors to earn extra points. There’s no wrong way to spend destiny. They’re your Destiny Points, after all, so spend them how you like.

Strategy For A Monstrous Destiny
It costs more than 600,000 Destiny Points to buy all the traits, skills, and other available advancements for any one Monster class. The DP earned by filling all seven character slots with level 60 heroes isn’t enough to cover that. You’d have 70,000 DP if you saved it all. So how do you turn your fledgling Monster into a true terror of the Free Peoples?

The answer, of course, is to eke every Destiny Point you can out of the armoured hides and brave souls that trod the Ettenmoors. Slay slugs, hunt Hobbits, and complete the ruthless missions of your insidious taskmasters. Repeatable quests are usually the fastest way to earn Destiny Points.

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The life of an Uruk is a cycle of destruction. Each foe crushed by your Monster Play character is worth Destiny Points you can spend on skills to better crush more foes.


Spending DP on Monster Play attributes and skills is a great value, because those class-based abilities are your character’s to keep. But that also means every purchase is an investment in that character. Be sure you’ve found a Monster class you want to stick with before you spend 20 levels of hard-earned Destiny Points on expensive skills and a new wardrobe. Instead of renting an edge for a centerpiece character, you’re buying major components for a character whose tale is limited to the bloody battlefields of the Ettenmoors.

And remember that you’re spending a brave adventurer’s heroic destiny to advance the grim aims of the Witch-king and bring woe to the Free Peoples. How are you going to look Galadriel in the eye after doing that? With shame or pride?