Middle-Earth: Shadow of War can be a gruelling experience. As you cut down Orcs as Talion the Ranger, you’ll get random loot drops. These items can significantly increase Talion’s strengths and make the game all-around easier, enhancing your stealth or wraith skills to become an even more efficient ranger. There’s just one minor problem — you’ll have to manually collect all that loot.
That’s a problem when Orcs of every flavor are trying to murder Talion every step of the way. To collect loot, Talion needs to approach a drop and interact with it. Each and every one — it’s pretty much the same as the original Shadow of Mordor, but with so much chaos (and arrows) flying around, it’s even easier to miss valuable loot drops.
More Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor guides on Gameranx:
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – What Are Gems? | Game Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – How To Unlock Mounts | Game Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – All Ithildin Door Puzzle Solutions | Game Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – All Web of Fate Tokens Cirith Ungol | Collectibles Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – How To Get Every Legendary Set | Collectibles Guide
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- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – 10 Beginner Tips & Tricks | Game Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – Farming Legendary Gear | Collectibles Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – How To Farm Mirian | XP Guide
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Every Edition Available | Game Guide
- Shadow of War: Sign-Up To WBPlay For +3% XP Boost (And Why That’s Completely Optional)
- Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – How To Get The True Ending | Act 4 Guide
Quality-Of-Life Skills To Unlock Early
To make life easier for Talion in the early game, it might be a good idea to unlock skills in the Wraith skill tree. Along with improving your magical prowess, Wraith contains the Treasure Hunter upgrade. When unlocked, Treasure Hunter will automatically collect loot when you walk into the icons, completely skipping those lengthy item collection animations.
- Unlock Treasure Hunter early. It’s the last in the Wraith skill tree.
- For more Skill Tree info, check out the Shadow of War Skills List.
Annoyingly, Treasure Hunter is at the top of the Wraith skill tree list, so you’ll have to spend a lot of ability points to unlock it early. Like any game, it’s a good idea to focus on unlocking a wide range of skills you want — but try to focus on Wraith and get that Treasure Hunter unlocked as soon as possible for an easier time.
With Treasure Hunter unlocked, you’ll be able to run around battlefields, collecting treasure without even trying. The amount of loot dropped is insane compared to Shadow of Mordor — you’ll find lots of items laying around after most encounters, instead of just the basic single-drops from Captains in Shadow of Mordor. Loot also plays a bigger part in the various inventory systems and menus. So yeah, get this stuff quick.
The biggest problem with loot isn’t that you have to go through animations — like the first game, it’s really only viable to grab loot after you’ve cleared out entire Orc encampments. Orcs are everywhere, and picking everyone (and everything) off can get pretty annoying. When you can call in your army of bodyguards, things do get a little easier.
Do what’s best for you, but it’s nice to know that Treasure Hunter skill is available. Just think if you had to manually collect every item in Destiny 2. Yeah, that’s what Shadow of War is like sometimes.
