I had no problems at all installing SweetFX and getting it to work on my older Windows 7 PC, but getting it to work on my new Windows 10 PC that I built a few months ago was a bit of a pain in the ass. Intrigued? Good! Intimidated? Possibly - I was.

Some screenshots pulled from the forums: normal LOTRO on the left, SweetFX LOTRO on the right. You can do a lot with the in game graphics, I will admit, but I still prefer the look SweetFX can give the game. The reason I marked this as “Your Mileage May Vary” is because some people find the SweetFX settings used in the screenshots to be over-saturated, too vibrant or dark, or just don’t want to use a 3rd party download. You can tweak the settings to your liking, of course. I agree with the original poster that using SweetFX significantly sharpens textures and makes colors far more vibrant. Some of those screenshots were pretty damn convincing, I must say. I played the game for years and years without any kind of alterations, and to be honest I never felt the game really needed anything else, graphic rendering wise. I can, and have, spent ridiculous amounts of time admiring scenery and drooling at Middle Earth, so when I first saw a thread about a download that would apparently make the game look even better, I was skeptical at first (and also really excited). Lemme start by saying that LOTRO is a beautiful game.

OKAY THIS IS THE LAST 3RD PARTY SOFTWARE THING I WILL PLUG I SWEAR.

How to use sweetfx with lotro