We will begin with installing DDO. This is the easiest part of the process of running DDO on Linux, and will consist mostly of waiting for the download to finish.

*note 1* If you have already done this on another machine or another operating system, you can simply copy the Desktop/DDO folder to a flash drive or something and run the installer from there.

*note 2* If you have installed DDO on another computer or operating system, you could also simply copy the 'Dungeons & Dragons Online - Stormreach' folder to your '.wine/drive_c/wherever_you_want_to_put_DDO' directory and run it from there. Wine doesn't care how you got the files, so long as they're there.

*note* As of the time of this writing, the installer that you would normally download from ddo.com fails in Wine. Unless you're installing the game in Windows, you need to use the links provided on this site (in the application info, labeled "Free Download") in order to install the game in linux.

1) Download the DDO installer (either the high- or low-res version; both of them work, although you may not be able to run with high-res graphics enabled) from the links provided above.

2) Run the DDO installer. This will begin the download of all of the resources needed by DDO, which is a lot of data, so be prepared to wait for a very long time. There's a pause button which will pause the download, and if you cancel the download, it will offer to place a shortcut on your desktop to resume the download at a later time.

3) When the download finishes, there will be a blue 'Run' button on the downloader, which you can use to start the installer. If you prefer, you can enter the directory where you told the downloader to download the files (default is 'Desktop/DDO') and just run the installer from there. Either way, a window will pop up asking a bunch of questions and stuff, and then it will install DDO to wherever you told it to install to.

*4) If you've just done all of the previously mentioned steps on a Windows or ReactOS partition, you probably want to copy the files to some place on your linux partition. You could technically leave them where they are, and then you could always reboot to Windows and still have DDO available, but I'm not a big fan of vfat and ntfs partitions. In either case, it doesn't really matter exactly where you put the DDO folder, so long as you know where it is.

You now have DDO installed. Like I said, easy. Next thing you need to do is install PyLotRO, which will send login info to the server so that you can actually play the game.

There are two ways to do this in ubuntu/debian: manual or automatic. In any other distro, you'll probably be forced to do a manual install, although you can check your package manager for PyLotRO if you'd like. If you want to use the automatic (faster) method, follow the instructions here (ubuntu/debian only). I have had issues with the automatic install of PyLotRO, such as an inability to patch, so this howto will focus on a manual install (especially since I no longer use ubuntu/debian).

*UPDATE*: Gentoo users can add the ebuild found at this bugzilla page to their local overlay to install pylotro via portage

*note* For simplicity's sake, PyLotRO also comes as a Windows binary that you can run in Wine. Personally, I prefer to use the linux version, because it feels more like a native linux application, but that's just personal preference. The Windows binary is probably easier. Just download it from the PyLotRO website and run it using Wine.

1) PyLotRO has a few things required before you can run it. Copying directly from the README provided with PyLotRO, these are the main packages required to install PyLotRO:

• Python
• 4Suite
• PyQT4

*note* The names may not be exactly the same as these, but these will give you a good idea of what to search for. Python and PyQT4 should be in everyone's package manager, but 4Suite is missing in some. I know for a fact that it is in portage (gentoo's primary and sabayon's secondary package manager), but it's not in entropy (sabayon's primary package manager). If you need to install it manually, google should help you out, or you can post here and I'll do my best.

2) Download the source for the latest version of PyLotRO from the bottom of this page and save it in a new folder (call it whatever you want)

*note* The bzip file containing the PyLotRO source code contains all the files loose, not in a containing folder. You really should make a whole new folder to put the bzip file in, or the folder you downloaded PyLotRO to will be filled with all kinds of source files when you extract it.

3) Open a terminal emulator (xterm, konsole, whatever) and cd to the folder you downloaded the PyLotRO source code to.

4) Extract the file with "tar xvjf PyLotRO-[version].tar.bz2".

5) Install PyLotRO with "./setup.py install" as root, or "sudo ./setup.py install" as a normal user.

If you got no errors, you're pretty much set. You just need to pick up a patchclient.dll from a recent LotRO, configure PyLotRO for DDO, and you'll be able to run DDO on linux!

Next, you should copy the patchclient.dll from Book 11 or newer. If you don't have local access to one, you can download the patchclient.dll from Book 13 here. Extract patchclient.dll to your DDO folder and rename it as something other than patchclient.dll (I chose to name mine 'lotropatcher.dll' (without quotes)). Whatever you name it, it should end with the .dll file extension, and it cannot be 'patchclient.dll', because if it is, that's the first file that the update process will overwrite.

Now to configure PyLotRO to let you play DDO.

Before you first run DDO, you will most likely want to run 'winecfg' and change the default Windows version from Windows XP to Windows 2000 - DDO runs more smoothly in Windows 2000 mode. If you're in Windows XP mode, you have to alt-tab to the game every time it starts, or you won't be able to skip the intro videos and they will be choppy. Once that's done, let's start PyLotRO.

1) Start PyLotRO either by finding it in your applications menu (it should be named "The Lord of the Rings Online", most likely in your "Games" menu) or by typing 'pylotro' at the application launcher or the command line.

2) Go to Tools -> Settings Wizard, choose your application (usually Wine, unless you have purchased and installed CrossOver), choose your game (for us, it will be Dungeons and Dragons Online) and click on Find Games. Assuming it found the correct game directory, select it and click the "Apply" button. If not, we'll configure everything manually in a bit.

3) Go to Tools -> Switch Game and choose Dungeons and Dragons Online from the drop-down list. Click "Ok".

4) Next, you need to go to tools -> options.

*note* For those of you whose automatic settings detection failed, this is where you can manually set your game directory - just type in the location or browse to it, and you're done.

Enable the Advanced Options, and change the Patch Client DLL to whatever you renamed the patchclient.dll to after you extracted it (I chose 'lotropatcher.dll', if you'll recall. If you followed my example, type that name, without quotes, in where it asks for the name of the DLL.) Save your settings (by clicking Save). You're all set, now - you should see a Realm drop-down list with all of DDO's servers (except for the test server) listed. Run Tools->Update (IMPORTANT - the game will fail if you don't run the update first), then select your server and log in using your account username and password.

Registry values are pretty much all defaults, now. You might still want to set the HKCU/Software/Wine/Direct3D/VideoMemorySize key, but other than that, the defaults are what give the best performance in DDO.