Basics: Bag End

 After your second season ends you will be "migrated"* to Bag End. And then after every following season again. Bag End is the place to take a break, to rest, to find a new group, join with friends. 

*to be migrated: the process of the game team transferring your account from a server to Bag End or vice versa.

When you hit Bag End (BE) for the first time you might be wondering where all the stuff is that you know. Well, you won't have your settlement in BE. Since one of the newer patches you have a little "cottage" on a map, but it's not the same. 

When you first enter your account after migration to Bag End, you will get a short guide with the highlights on what to find where. Many might just click that away because usually we find it annoying and we just wanna rush it. Later we might regret that because we simply cannot find what we're looking for. This is why below you will find a complete guide on BE and what to do there as well how to do it.

What is Bag End?

You could think of Bag End as sort of a lobby. An entryway and waiting room for the game. You cannot really do much while waiting. The purpose is to gather in teams and register for a new campaign - ideally as soon as possible. However, sometimes we need a few more days of a break or want to join a campaign that is not on offer currently. So the waiting might take some time in certain cases.

What can you do in Bag End?

As mentioned above: not much. However, you can prepare, play on your builds, work on your gear, view the season store and exchange items there, and a few other things. But most importantly: you register for campaigns. 

The menu options are a bit reduced. You have 

• Access to the map, with a small cottage that bears your name
• Access to the season store and your season medals
• Access to your inventory (Pack)
• Access to your Team (if it says "Join Team", don't panic, you might be in a team and the button not displaying it correctly)
• Access to your commanders
• Access to the Mathom House including Red Book Challenge, Free Daily Mathom Chest (up to 21 days), Commander Recruitment, Event Chests
• Access to your Notification Center
• Join Campaigns

Aside from this you have also 

• Manage your Account & Settings
• Access to the Store (Daily Mathom Clearance, Event Offers, Periodic Benefits, Gems)

Top Left Corner

The Season Store

After you played last season - hopefully successful - you will want your rewards unless you got them already on your last day on the server. The season store is a little bit hidden in Bag End. You will find it when you click on the ❔in the top left corner of your main screen in Bag End. 

This will take you to another screen. On the top right you can see the Season Medals you have available to spend and in the broad bar below you see the icon "Store" which will take you directly to the season store. Spend your Season Medals wisely.

Bottom Left Corner

The Map

There is not much going on on the map. Everyone has a little cottage on a 1x1 tile and you can relocate - if you spend gems. It isn't needed to do that at all. I doesn't cost as much as in server (only 50 gems), but if you are ftp or low spender, I would recommend against it as there is no added value to it.

If you want to relocate, you can only do so in the blue area in the West. Any tile that is a 1x1 works. It does not have to be connected to any other purple tile. 

As you can see this map is much bigger than the map you know from most seasons.

You can also explore the map and the structures' names and short description if you are interested in that. 

Chat

As in season you also have the chat option in Bag End. As you're used to it there are two tabs: one for any group chats and the other for private chates.

In the tab with the group chats you will find World Chat, Team Chat (if you are in a team) and all the group chats that you may have created (maximum 2) or joined. 

However, old conversations from the season will be purged. All your chats will start empty with every migration to Bag End or into a new server. If there is important information, better take note or it will be lost once you migrate again.

Bottom Right Corner

The Pack (Inventory)

Your Inventory has a different name in Bag End. It is the same as in season though. You can fully access all gear and respect items and work on them. You can open gear chests or respect items chests, etc. You cannot use any boosts should you have any that transfer across seasons. Most of them are only valid in the season you are in, but sometimes it's possible that you get your hands on a boost that is not tied to a season. While in Bag End, you have no use for them. 

If you are a spender and run into the issue that your inventory is full, the game will offer you to store some gear items temporarily. You will get these items sent into your Notification Center, where you can pick them up in your next season.

Team (Join a Team)

Next to the Pack button you find the access to your team. At the moment this button always shows as "Join a Team", which might be confusing if you are in a team already. Don't freak out. Just click it and you will see if you are in a team or not. If you are in a team, it will display the team's code, whether it is Public, (visible for) Friends (of the leader) or Private and how many members are in the team. The maximum amount of members per team is 100. 

Furthermore you can see if there is any description of the team.

On the bottom you see another tab called "Members". In this tab you can see all the team members listed. There is no particular sorting of members that I could find yet. In the column "Relationship" you can see if the member is listed in your friends list. Lastly, in your own line you can see three dots in the column "Use". If you should want to leave the team, this is where you can do that. 

As Leader of the team the column "Use" also has other functions. Here you can dismiss members if they are not supposed to be on the team or transfer leadership of the team. Be careful with this and read the pop up window! You don't want to transfer leadership accidentally to a member that you really wanted to remove from the team. 

Commander

With the next button in line on the bottom right you find all your commanders. Here you can access every single commander, regardless of their alignment. You can do everything that you can also do in game, including viewing the tasks for uniques, etc. Please stay tuned for a more in-depth guide on the commander page.

Mathom House

The bigger button in the far right corner on the bottom is your way into the Mathom House. Enter with caution! The temptation to spend can be big. 

The Mathom House provides you with everything that you also have in season: 

• The Mathom House itself with all the tempting chest offers
• Commander Recruitment where you can see all your commanders on the map and gift them their respect items
• The Red Book of Westmarch, where you can do the Challenge. Don't forget to come back here. Gifts in form of a free Mathom Coin, 100 (or 200) Gems and 5 (or 10) Mathom Vouchers await you when you finish the challenge successfully.

Notification Center

Directly above the big Button you find the Notification Center. Here you receive all relevant messages like the weekly maintenance emails from the game team, notifications when your team's leadership has been transferred, notification if you were removed from your team as well as when your team registered for a campaign. You will also find the Purchase emails if you made any. 

Top Right Corner

Gems

You see your gems balance as you know it with the button to add more gems if you decide to do that. This ➕ button brings you directly to the Store.

Season Overview

Underneath the gems symbol you find a smaller button with a timer. This is the quick access to your last season's overview and from there you can also get to the Season Store as well as to your Season Journey if you want to watch this.

The timer displays for how much longer this direct link is accessible. 

Settings

The little gear ⛮ button to the right of your gems balance, next to the ➕ button will take you to your settings. Here you can change your name for 500 gems (you can change in Bag End and also in each server) once per season or once per stay in Bag End.

You can also change your Avatar and your Personal Profile Message.

In your Profile you can see your Season Journey and if you click on "more", you can click on the banners and see the season's Summary. 

Lastly you find at the bottom of the screen

• Settings (Sound&Display, Notification, Language & Game Settings)
• Customer Support
• Tutorial

Store

The button with the gems sack in the top right corner will also take you to the store. 

The Store in Bag End is a bit more reduced as all the season-relevant options are not available while you are not in season. 

Event

Lastly, there is also the Event button that you know from the game in season, but also here there is not much to find as there are no game related events going on in Bag End - at least so far. 

However, you can find the links to the FB Group, FB Fan Page, Discord and YouTube if you want to check these out while waiting. 

Center

In the center of your screen, next to Bilbo, above his desk, you find the most important button. The button that will bring you to 

Campaign

... registration. Here you find all available and currently unavailable campaigns for register as well as a team list to the bottom right of the screen. 

For a comprehensive guide on how to register and an overview over the campaigns please read my next article to be published shortly ...