Lord Of The Rings, The: The Return Of The King - Strategy Guide (Page 03)

Below are the cheat codes, hints and help for Lord Of The Rings, The: The Return Of The King - Strategy Guide (Page 03).

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7. ARTIFACTS

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1. SIMBELMYNE:
Map: Dunharrow - River Crossing (Eowyn only)
Go east until you can turn southeast, then do so. When you see the ramp
head down it. After killing all these orcs there is an artifact (Simbelmyne)
below the pond

2. FEATHER OF GWAIHIR
Map: Pelennor Fields - Fork (Gandalf only)
The second time you are on this map, head back to the original entrance in the 
SW corner to find this artifact.

3. DEAGOL'S SKULL
Map: Mt Doom - Slopes of Mt Doom (Frodo only)
Head up the stairs to see a banner orc up on the hill. Go up there and kill him
and make sure NOT to break any of the barrels on the way. Go all the way south 
to where you started and head right. You should see Gollum. Open the chest near
him for Deagol's Skull.

4. THERE AND BACK AGAIN
Map: Anduin River - Corsair Camp (Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli)
First head north to find a girl (or an old woman, apparently) who has lost her 
brother. Now head all the way southeast, down some stairs and across a "bridge 
of water" if that makes sense). Head all the way north to find the boy, and 
lead him back to the girl for some exp and an item. Head SW from here to get 
to a locked building. Rescue the man south of there and he'll unlock it. Go 
through it for - tada! The artifact, in one of the barrels!

5. WITCH KING'S CROWN
Map: Pelennor Battle - Witch King (Eowyn only)
After killing the Witch King, find this artifact near Theoden's body.

6. GALADRIEL'S LOCK
Map: Ithilien - North (Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli)
You need to find the tree covered in butterflies
(its northwest of the exit, which is in the southeast) and follow them to a 
tree in the northeast. Galadriel's Lock is there. 

7. SARUMAN'S PALANTIR
Map: Isengard - Orthanc (Gandalf only)
When fighting Saruman, this artifact is in a chest in the NW corner. Be sure 
to get it BEFORE killing Saruman.

8. SHELOB'S STINGER
Map: Cirith Ungol - Ambush (Frodo only)
After defeating Shelob, check Frodo's body.

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8. BOSSES

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-Shelob:
Shelob is one tough mother. I was able to beat her at level 8, but it took a
lot of work. Traps are good to deal some extra damage, but you can't depend
on them to single-handedly kill the stupid spider, so you'll need a strong 
weapon. I was using a 7-15 damage axe, and it seemed to do the trick. If you
don't have one, you might want to fight in the previous area or a bonus map to
find one. Either way, the strategy is basically to stand to the side of Shelob
and whack away at her. If you are too far back, she will turn around a hit you
with a poison attack. If you are too far forward, her attacks will be too 
accurate to dodge. LOTRboy16 (LOTRboy16@aol.com) submitted this strategy:

"When fighting Shelob, there is a certain place you can stand if you [go] all 
the way to the very bottom of the pit, then all the way to the right. You can 
attack Shelob easily, and only get hit maybe once or twice. I beat Shelob with
this strategy as level 8 Sam without using traps or knife throw.".

-Gollum:
Gollum is incredibly strong, agile and accurate so using traps is reccomended.
If you haven't put any points into traps, just use knives and your weapon and
hope for the best. After Gollum dies, hit him again toward the lava. It helps
to have high defense, but just keep trying and you'll get it. He's not near
as hard as Shelob ;-).

-Witch King & Fell Beast:
The Fell Beast is easy, he has less HP than some normal enemies. You can 
probably kill it in 1-2 normal hits. Anyway, once it's dead, you have to face
off against the Witch King. He's actually not that bad. He has his normal
attack, and then three energy attacks: the red one drains your life, ALOT. The
blue one drains your mana, A LOT. The black one heals him and kills all the 
enemies around him. You can either employ the hit-and-run tactic, which takes
 a long time but almost guarantees your victory, or the melee tactic. Melee 
usually is faster, but when he uses his red energy attack, be sure to run lest
your energy be sapped. Try to use the enemies to get fruit, herbs, mushrooms,
etc.Anyway, after a volley of Double Slashes the lord of the Nine will die and
you can grab his artifact near Theoden. Exit SW (don't get killed by orcs!)

Here is another strategy, sent to me by spaceforce@snohost.com:
"When I defeated the Witch King, I was at level 12. Here were my equipment and
skills: 
Strengthened Imperial Helm 
Flawless Medallion +1 Damage. +1 Strength, +1 Accuracy. +1 Health, +20 hit 
 points 
Organza Coat +2 Melee Armor, +2 Missile Armor, +2 Defense, +12 hit points 
Knight's Skeggox Axe 9-18 Melee Damage, +12 2H Damage (up to 30 damage--ouch!),
 +5 hit points per slain foe, +5% Critical, +50% Fear Resistance, +50% Poison 
 resistance (the poison resistance makes fighting the Witch King a hell of a 
 lot easier) 
No shield (A shield is nearly useless when fighting the Witch King, and I 
 needed the extra damage)
Breastplate +14 Melee Armor. +14 Missile Armor 
Haradrim Riding Boots +7 Melee Armor, +2 Accuracy, +1 Defense, +5% Speed, 
 +10% Poison Resistance 
Level 1 Nimble skill 
Level 1 Herb Lore skill 
Maxed Keen Eyes skill 
Level 1 Fighter's Resolve 
Level 3 Fleet of Foot 
Level 1 Double Strike 
Level 1 Rohan Sprint 
My stat allotment emphasized strength, health, and defense. Anyway, with a 
similar or better setup, you kill the Witch King's fell beast and then try to
avoid him while you kill the attacking orcs and smash the barrels. If you see 
a herb, grab it. Fight until you're killed. Repeat as needed until you have 
ten herbs. Then, approach the Nazgul, taking care to avoid the flames on the 
ground, and kill his fell beast. When he gets up, run up towards him and hack 
away as fast as you possibly can. Ignore his attacks; the herbs will soak up 
the damage. Keep chopping away until he's dead. I had four herbs left over 
when the Witch King croaked." 

-Saruman:
First things first. Open the chest in the top left corner for the Palantir
artifact. After that, you'll need to take out Saruman himself. He has a variety
of attacks: A fireblast, which comes in a set of three, a shield, a staff
attack and an attack where Saruman throws one of the blue stones at you. 
Basically, the strategy is to turn on your shield right away and spend the
first few second letting Saruman throw the stones and dodging them. Once
all or most of them are gone, then you can easily attack/lightstrike him from
a distance. His only worrysome attack is the fireball, just dodge three of them
and there'll be a short break for you to attack. He should die easily if you
rid him of his blue stones.

Here is a trick for leveling up sent to me by Giles Beilby for beating the 
upcoming boss:

"I have a suggestion for getting Gandalf past Sauraman in the beginning (and 
actually good advice for the whole game). When you are in the tower, but 
before you reach the highest room, kill everything in sight, then before 
going to the highest room, save, quit, reload, and do it again. This way I 
was able to get to level 10 (which might be a bit excessive) with a shield 
spell he couldn't break. With that, he was easy."

-Denethor:
Um...all right. This is a strange boss to say the least. You can't hurt him 
directly; However, you can take his life down by destroying the torches he 
throws at you. After you destroy 10 or so of them, he will die o_0. This is
as easy as the bosses get, folks.

-Mouth of Sauron: 
This boss can be a pain, moreso with Legolas than the other two characters. 
There are two different strategies depending on how much defense you have.

STRATEGY 1: Weak
There are two switches in the NE and the NW corner that shut the doors that
the enemies come out of. Once you hit both of them, both doors re-open, but
the shielded orcs and archers guarding the Mouth step out of form and allow
you to attack him without having to bust through. Still hard, but if you can't
get past the shielded bastards this is your only choice.

STRATEGY 2: Strong
The other strategy is to only hit ONE of the switches to stop some of the orcs,
and then rush the Mouth. This means you'll have to be stronger to take the 
damage from the archers, but you'll have less enemies overall. Aragorn is the
best from this, King's Command makes it a breeze.

Nils Persson (eperfson@mn.rr.com) had this strategy to use as Legolas:

"Level up silent stride as much as you can before you get to the boss.  It 
doesn't use much mana, so you can regenerate it quickly if you use the elf 
ruin that regenerates spirit quickly.  Use friend of mirkwood to start it off,
that makes the shield dudes move around.  Then just silent stride in towards 
the boss.  Then, keep using it while sticking him full of arrows- spreadfire 
helps at point blank range.  I beat him on my first try using that strategy."

9. SECRETS
  
9.1 BONUS MAPS
Helm's Deep: Beat the game once with any character.
Moria: Kill 2000 enemies with one character.
Fangorn Forest: Beat the game once with every character.
Weathertop: Obtain all the artifacts.

9.2 SECRET CHARACTERS
*NOTE: Secret characters are only available in multiplayer and bonus maps. To
       use them you must create a blank file, then select bonus maps, then 
       select the blank file.

Smeagol: Smeagol can be obtained easily by beating the game with two 
         characters.
Sam: Sam, who is a clone of Frodo, can be uptained by linking with the GCN
     version of the ROTK.


10. FAQ

Q: How complete is this version?
A: Nothing is really ever complete. Please feel completely free to email me at
trancegotenks@hotmail.com with suggestions, comments, etc.

Q: Are you planning on including a unique item list?
A: Not at this point. If someone wants to send me one to include in this FAQ,
you can be assured that you will get full credit. But for right now I have 
neither the time nor the energy to try to collect every unique item.

Q: How about a beastiary?
A: No, probably not. I have no idea about any of their stats, so the guide 
would probably be "This guy is hard and orange, this guy is harder and purple."

Q: Your strategy sucks! ______ is too hard!
A: Level up in Moria, or quit.


11. CLOSING

Well, I basically want to thank the cast and crew of The Lord of The Rings
trilogy for creating such an incredible set of movies. And obviously, thanks
to Tolkien for bringing Middle-Earth to life. I also want to thank the ROTK
message boards for giving me tips on how to play as Gandalf (I hate him...so
much...) I would also like to thank the following people for their specific 
suggestions:

Nils Persson (eperfson@mn.rr.com) for his Mouth of Sauron suggestion.
LOTRboy16@aol.com for the Shelob strategy.
Brandon Jones (gobrando@cox.net) for various suggestions on skills and runes.
Spaceforce@snohost.com for his in-depth Witch King strategy.
Giles Beilby  for the awesome Saruman trick.


12. COPYRIGHT INFO

This guide is ( c ) Copyright 2004 by Matthew Borgard. It is intended for 
private use only. You may NOT publish this guide on a website or otherwise
without my consent. If I allow you to do so, you may NOT alter it in any way.