Shadow of War is a new open world game in the style of Ubisoft open world games (because that is the style of open worlds that Warner Bros. favours). And, in true Ubisoft fashion, its game world is littered with collectibles for you to hunt down and gather. In this guide, we help you find them all.

There are three separate types of collectibles in the game:

• Shelob’s Memories. These are memories of the infamous giant spider Shelob. Finding them gets you skill points, as well as lore and backstory.
• Gondorian Artifacts. These are lost Gondorian artifacts, which can be found after can be found after completing The Seeing Stone quest in Minis Ithil. You can recover these artifacts for Skill Points and lore. Getting them all unlocks the Prospector Skill upgrade. You will encounter these in the game’s world.
• Ithildin Doors/Poems. These are doors you will come across in the world, which have poems engraved on them, with missing words. Opening these doors lets you have all the loot inside.

ITHILDIN DOORS

Each region of the game has its own door, and you need to complete the poem on each to be able to gain access to the loot stash inside. Below, you will find all the poems in the game, completed. The bolded words are the missing ones you have to put in.

Gorgoroth

They stalk and Lurk, then lash out so furious
Yet our Bulwark is proof against their rage
Our hard-ringed, hand-forged armor Impervious
To predations from the Powers of darkness
No matter how Vicious or how vile
To assail the Bright Lord is to falter and Fail.

Minas Morgul

In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie
We bear our banners aloft, boots like Drums
Our Cadence quick, our countenance dire.
For who in this dark, dream-haunted Land dares
Resist the righteous flame of Wrath
And Doom themselves to despair and death?

Nurnen

Let our foes fortify with Iron and stone
Let them summon scabrous Serpents, feral beasts
It will Avail them nought. Across the ages none
Have an army that wields such weapons, such Woe
Such doom against the dark-benighted Hordes who dare
Claim dominion over a Mordor soon bright.

Cirith Ungol

When the sun Rises, the shadows must retreat
Fleeing in fear from the Fires of dawn
The Night never knew that its end was fleet
As a Bright Lord bears Beacons of flame.
The sun rises, yes — but from the West it Shines
Marching e’er Eastward, e”er eternal, e’er bright.

Seregost

Fair Mordor Slumbers, entangled in night
A vipers’ Nest of sorrow and strife
Poisoned by pernicious betrayal and blight
Trapped in the grasp of gelid corpse-hands
Yet behold! The Bright Lord Comes as a wildfire
Burning only what is Base, that all else may thrive.

SHELOB’S MEMORIES

Getting Shelob’s Memories gets you skill points and backstory for the game. It’s highly recommended that you try getting them all!

Minas Ithil

1. The first memory is in the northern part of the map. You can find it with the Haedir.
2. The next memory is in the colosseum.
3. The third memory is near the southwestern Haedir tower.

Cirith Ungol

1. You can get this one by the eastern tower. The memory is going to be up on a cliff.
2. This one is by the southern tower. If you climb the tower, you can see it glowing by the water. =
3. In the southeast, go to the mine, and find the platforms that overlook it. You will find the memory near the structure’s back wall- but it will be guarded by enemies.

Fortresses. Ah. These are giant outposts that you storm and take on in the game. But these are really hard to actually capture- your army needs to scale the walls, claim each victory point while fighting off the orcs that try to intercept you, make your way to the Overlord’s room, and defeat them while they have a swarm of backup orcs trying to intercept you, before you can take one for yourself.

You could realistically just try doing this all by yourself- which would be freakishly difficult and unrewarding. Don’t do that. It’s almost impossible. Instead, let’s talk about the smart way to do things.

• Fortresses are gigantic castles and outposts. Each Fortress has a defense level- if this level is higher than your assault level, don’t bother taking it on yet and come back when you are better prepared. If it is equal to or lower than (recommended) your assault level, read on.
• Take out the Warchiefs. These Warhiefs are key Orc military members who stand on the ramparts, and they are extremely strong. Taking them out will make your job infinitely easier. To do this, you need to recruit Captains to your army and have them infiltrate a Warchief’s squad. In the heat of battle, they will betray the Warchief and kill him. There, your job is so much easier now.
• Don’t be afraid of losing Captains. Because you will- in the fighting or via betrayal, you will lose members of your army, that is just how things are. Accept it and move on.
• Don’t fight more than you have to. Once you have claimed a victory point, don’t stay there to fight off orcs- run to the next one. Remember, your aim is to capture all of them- you’ll be doing a lot of fighting anyway, so don’t waste time adding to it.
• Beat the Warlord. Now this will be difficult. The Warlord is a hard boss battle, and no matter what you do, this battle will test you. Be patient, don’t get too greedy, and fight this carefully- because once you defeat the Warlord, this fortress is yours.

Okay, now you have a Fortress. So what do you do next?

• Now you have to defend the fortress. When you claim a fortress, you assign captains as Warchiefs and Warlords, and they will defend it for you. This is great, right? Not right. See, the problem is, these guys don’t level up with you- so chances are that at some point in the future, you are attacked, and you’re straddled with underpowered orcs, unable to take the threat on. This is where keeping your defenses shored up comes in.
• Get siege upgrades for your fortresses. These require you to spend Miriam, but doing so will let you have more Warchiefs on the ramparts- always helpful.
• Replace your army regularly. You can either spend Miriam to buy new followers, spend real money to buy new followers, or recruit new followers and rotate them into the fortress.
• Utilize the Pit Fight Missions. This is important, because it helps level your Orcs up. It also gets you gear and Miriam. Remember, that the Orcs have a level cap equal to yours- and also that this process can and will take a lot of time.
• Keep swapping your Warchiefs and Warlords out. Either with new ones, or by demoting them so that they can be trained via pit missions to get more powerful (before you promote them back again).

Money. Experience. Skills. You know the drill. The grind in most modern games, derived from RPGs, of trying to stay on top of multiple currencies and proficiency meters, to unlock more powers and abilities for yourself slowly.

In this guide, we walk you through the skills, and methods to get money and XP via legitimate means first. Then, we also share a cheat you can use to get unlimited money in the PC version of the game.

FARMING MONEY:

• Complete quests. This is the easiest, and most obvious, way to earn money.
• Beat Treasure Orcs. These are the Orcs with the orange and white dots over them.
• Complete Shadows of the Past missions.
• Destroy old and useless gear. 
• Pit fights– these earn you money and gear for each fight, and you don’t lose anything from it. The only problem is you do lose a lot of time to this…

Farming Gold

Gold is the premium currency you use to buy lootcrates. You can either buy it, or get it in game. To get it in game, you:

• Fend off a Fortress Invasion online. Basically, this is invisible and asynchronous. You need to have your fortress well defended to be able to do this.
• Complete a Daily Challenge with a Gold Payout.

FARMING XP

• Complete main quests
• Dominate captains
• Complete Vendetta Missions
• Complete Nemesis Missions
• Take over Outposts

UPGRADES

There are so many upgrades for Tallon in this game- you unlock them using Skill Points. Each upgrade enhances a passive skill or gives you an active one to use- below, the video demonstrates these for you.

PC CHEATS FOR UNLIMITED MONEY/SILVER CHESTS:

Please be advised that the following methods are to be used at the sole discretion of the system owner. GamingBolt or its staff members take no responsibility for problems that may arise or issues that may occur from trying the below. We are merely reporting on this.

This report from PC Gamer shows how to get unlimited Silver (not Gold) in the game.

Much like they did with Arkham Knight, Warner Bros. have made the decision to lock the true ending of Shadow of War behind a lot of end game activities. Unlike with Arkham Knight, the end game activities here revolve all around the same mode, and depending on how you feel about metagames, are actually fun.

That said, getting the True Ending (which is basically completing Act 4) unlocked will require a significant amount of time- we are talking of at least a 5-6 hour investment. You can try and expedite the process by using the in game microtransactions- but it is advisable that you just spend the couple of extra hours and try to get this done for free.

In short, here are the steps:

• You need to complete Siege Quest. This entails defending all the Fortresses, and reaching Stage 10 (yes, there are 10 stages of defense). Doing so unlocks the True Ending.
• It is recommended you invest in defensive upgrades, because later stages see the challenge upped, and the enemies become more aggressive. You will automatically reach level 60 during Act 4.
• Target the Assault Leader- get him out and you defend against the Siege.

Unlike Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War makes inventory management a big deal. There are reasons for this- your gear determines various stats, its rarity determines the kinds of upgrades it can and will get, the gems you use can be used to stack more perks to it, and finally, Legendary Sets can bestow upon you all sorts of powers.

It’s RPG-esque in terms of the inventory management involved here- or you can think of this as being similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which also placed an emphasis on your inventory. Nevertheless, the inventory here works differently from most other games, so let us walk you through it.

• There are five separate item types in your inventory- a sword, a dagger, a bow, armor, and a cloak. These increase your melee, stealth, ranged attack, defense, and stealth respectively. You can only have one of each equipped at a time.
• There are four ranks of gear- common (white), rare (yellow), epic (orange), and legendary (purple).
• You get gear for completing side quests, and as loot drops when you kill orcs. You can also just buy it from the Market using in game money. Gear is not hard to find, don’t stress over it.
• Each gear item has an upgrade challenge associated with it- the challenge increases that gear’s stat. How much the stat is increased by, and how hard the challenge is, is determined by the gear’s rarity level (the rarer it is, the harder it is to upgrade it, but the more it will be enhanced upon being upgraded). You can check the upgrade challenge for an item in the inventory- and remember, only your equipped items’ upgrade challenges are active for you at any moment. This means you can only be upgrading one sword, dagger, bow, armor, and cloak at a time.
• You can add Gems to each type of gear (but not individual gear pieces) for bonuses. Potency gems add damage, vitality gems add health, wealth gems add, well, wealth.
• There are five ranks of Gems:
  • Basic
  • Carved
  • Polished
  • Refined
  • Perfect
• Each rank is more powerful than the last, and you can combine three of any gem rank gems to get one of the next rank. So, for instance, three Carved gems will give you one Polished one.

LEGENDARY GEAR

This deserves its own section, so here we are. Legendary Gear is late game stuff- each Legendary Gear you pick up belongs to a set. Completing a set leads to some severe bonuses. You can track how many pieces of each set you have and what bonuses you have available from the rightmost icon in your inventory.

The sets in the game, as well as instructions to unlock their individual pieces, follow below:

Feral Legendary Set

• Feral Sword
  Kill a Legendary Feral Slayer or Destroyer.
• Feral Dagger
  Kill a Legendary Feral Assassin or Berserker.
• Feral Bow
  Kill a Legendary Feral Marksman or Tracker.
• Feral Armor
  Kill a Legendary Feral Tank.
• Feral Cloak
  Kill a Legendary Feral Beastmaster.
• Feral Ringcraft
  Kill a Legendary Feral Commander or Trickster.

Marauder Legendary Set

• Marauder Sword
  Kill a Legendary Marauder Slayer or Berserker.
• Marauder Dagger
  Kill a Legendary Marauder Assassin or Tracker.
• Marauder Bow
  Kill a Legendary Marauder Marksman.
• Marauder Armor
  Kill a Legendary Marauder Tank or Destroyer.
• Marauder Cloak
  Kill a Legendary Marauder Beastmaster or Trickster.
• Marauder Ringcraft
  Kill a Legendary Marauder Commander.

Machine Legendary Set

• Machine Sword
  Kill a Legendary Machine Slayer or Berserker.
• Machine Dagger
  Kill a Legendary Machine Assassin or Tracker.
• Machine Bow
  Kill a Legendary Machine Marksman .
• Machine Armor
  Kill a Legendary Machine Tank.
• Machine Cloak
  Kill a Legendary Machine Beastmaster or Trickster.
• Machine Ringcraft
  Kill a Legendary Machine Commander.

Terror Legendary Set

• Terror Sword
  Kill a Legendary Terror Slayer or Destroyer.
• Terror Dagger
  Kill a Legendary Terror Assassin .
• Terror Bow
  Kill a Legendary Terror Marksman or Tracker.
• Terror Armor
  Kill a Legendary Terror Tank.
• Terror Cloak
  Kill a Legendary Terror Beastmaster or Berserker.
• Terror Ringcraft
  Kill a Legendary Terror Commander or Trickster.

Mystic Legendary Set

• Mystic Sword
  Unlocked by killing a Legendary Mystic Slayer .
• Mystic Dagger
  Unlocked by killing a Legendary Mystic Assassin or Berserker.
• Mystic Bow
  Unlocked by killing a Legendary Mystic Marksman or Tracker.
• Mystic Armor
  Unlocked by killing a Legendary Mystic Tank or Destroyer.
• Mystic Cloak
  Unlocked by killing a Legendary Mystic Beastmaster.
• Mystic Ringcraft
  Unlocked by killing a Legendary Mystic Commander or Trickster.

Warmonger Legendary Set

• Warmonger Sword
  Kill a Legendary Warmonger Slayer.
• Warmonger Dagger
  Kill a Legendary Warmonger Assassin or Tracker.
• Warmonger Bow
  Kill a Legendary Warmonger Marksman.
• Warmonger Armor
  Kill a Legendary Warmonger Tank or Destroyer.
• Warmonger Cloak
  Kill a Legendary Warmonger Beastmaster or Berserker.
• Warmonger Ringcraft
  Kill a Legendary Warmonger Commander or Trickster.

Bright Lord Legendary Set

• Bright Lord Sword
  Open the Ithildin Door in Gorgoroth.
• Bright Lord Dagger
  Open the Ithildin Door in Seregost.
• Bright Lord Bow
  Open the Ithildin Door in Nurnen.
• Bright Lord Armor
  Open the Ithildin Door in Minas Ithil.
• Bright Lord Cloak
  Open the Ithildin Door in Cirith Ungol.
• Bright Lord Ringcraft
  Complete all Shadows of the Past missions with at least a Bronze rating

Middle-earth: Shadow of War Vendetta Legendary Set

• Vendetta Sword
  Complete and finished all objectives of first Vendetta mission.
• Vendetta Dagger
  Use a stealth attack against an online Vendetta Target.
• Vendetta Bow
  Headshot an online vendetta target.
• Vendetta Armor
  Kill an online vendetta target with your HP over 80%
• Vendetta Cloak
  Use a mounted attack against an online vendetta target.
• Vendetta Ringcraft
  Kill a Legendary Vendetta Commander or Trickster.

Dark Legendary Set

• Dark Sword
  Kill a Legendary Dark Slayer or Dark Destroyer.
• Dark Dagger
  Kill a Legendary Dark Assasin
• Dark Bow
  Kill a Legendary Dark Marksman or Tracker.
• Dark Armor
  Kill a legendary Dark Tank.
• Dark Cloak
  Kill a Legendary Dark Berserker or Beastmaster.

Okay, so the big new thing in Shadow of War is that you can do something that Tolkien’s heroes would otherwise never do- work with the disgusting orcs, recruiting them over to your side, and furthering your mission to take on the Dark Lord.

Of course, the problem with this is that all orcs are not equal- while most of them will do the job fine, and having a number of any kind of orcs will give you the advantage of overwhelming numbers on your side, having stronger Orcs is even more preferable.

These are the Legendary and Epic Orcs- they are better than your standard fare Orcs. And here, we talk about how to get them on your side:

• First things first, they are exceptionally rare. If you find one in the game world, do not kill it. Dominate it and recruit it to your side.
• Game the Nemesis system. The orcs that defeat you level up and become stronger- this can eventually lead to them attaining Legendary and Epic ranks too. Let specific orcs kill you over and over again, and when they have levelled up, dominate and recruit them. But make sure you are leveled up too…otherwise it will be difficult to take them out.
• Spend real world money on the loot boxes. I do not recommend this, simply because of my distaste for these- but if you want to do it, be my guest. Spend 1,500 Miriam to get a guaranteed Epic orc, and another random orc, in this game’s version of loot boxes.

Shadow of Mordor was known for its exciting fights, and Shadow of War is no different in that regard. While it’s never winning any best bosses awards against some of the best games out there, there are some thrilling bosses for you to encounter and take on in Shadow of War nonetheless.

And if you need any help with these bosses- which include some of the most iconic characters from the Lord of the Rings series as well- then you have come to the right place. In this guide, we walk you through the various bosses in the game and how to defeat them. In the process, we obviously end up spoiling the game, too- so if you watch this guide, make sure you either don’t care about being spoiled, or that you don’t jump ahead of where you are.

• 0:00 – Arena Champions
• 12:08 – Nazguls
• 20:23 – Suladan
• 28:21 – Zog the Eternal and Balrog part 1
• 32:16 – Balrog “Tar Goroth” part 2
• 45:25 – Zog the Eternal part 2
• 48:07 – Zog the Eternal part 3
• 52:37 – Helm Hammerhand
• 57:40 – Helm Hammerhand part 2
• 1:03:41 – Bruz the Chopper
• 1:08:00 – Zog the Eternal part 4
• 1:15:18 – Isildur
• 1:20:31 – Battle to reach the Witch King
• 1:28:37 – Isildur part 2
• 1:41:27 – The Witch King
• 1:47:37 – Sauron
• 1:52:37 – Ending
• 1:54:15 – True Ending