Alignment

“	There are no travellers in these lands, only servants of the Dark Tower or the White.	”
–Faramir, son of Denethor, The Two Towers

Alignment is a core feature of the Mod, a system by which you gain or lose standing among the different factions of Middle-earth.

Various actions performed in Middle-earth will raise or lower your player's alignment with various factions, and this will influence the things you are able to do in the Mod - such as interaction with NPCs, access to faction-specific crafting tables, ability to trade and hire units, making enemies flee from your presence, and eventually the availability of quests.

The Alignment Meter

The alignment bar for Rohan, when outside that faction's area of influence.

If you are far from a faction's location, then your alignment bar will look much like the one above. However, if you enter a region of Middle-earth where a faction is active, then your alignment bar will show arrows on the left and the right.

If you see these arrows, it means this alignment meter is "active", meaning that you're in that faction's sphere of influence, and that killing NPCs in this area will have an effect on your alignment with this faction. This means that killing Gundabad Orcs in the Lone-lands for example won't affect the player's alignment with the Woodland Realm, unless there are Wood-elves nearby. The alignment meter may also display round bullets beside it (see below), in which case it's still active, but only because there are NPCs of that faction around (this commonly happens with hired armies, for example).

Individual faction details

If you head over to the Middle-earth menu (default L), and tab over to the "Factions" menu, you'll come to a screen that displays quite a bit of information. You can change the faction whose details you're looking at by sliding the slider on the bottom of that screen to either the left or the right.

General details

Blue Mountains faction details.

The opening page will display a number of stats pertaining to that faction, including your alignment, the resulting title, the number of enemies you slew, the number of times you traded with the faction, the number of units you hired, and the number of mini-quests you completed.

Allies

Allies of the Blue Mountains.

By clicking on the "corner" of the book (near the arrows), you can learn more about that faction. The first screen is the one describing that faction's allies.

Enemies

Enemies of the Blue Mountains.

The next screen provides information regarding that faction's enemies.

Areas of Influence and Mechanisms

As mentioned before, all factions have areas of influence -- that is, the region where killing NPCs will have an effect on that faction's alignment. At any time while within the factions menu, you can click on the small plus symbol on the top right corner of the small map. You'll get a visual representation of that faction's areas of influence. Note that regardless of the areas of influence, killing NPCs will automatically make you lose alignment with their faction. However, in order to gain alignment with a faction, you have to kill its enemies within its areas of influence. Each NPC has a 24-blocks range of influence around him. If you kill enemies of an NPC within a 24-blocks area around him, you will gain alignment with his faction.

Furthermore, defeating invasions can grant you alignment with factions even if you are outside their areas of influence. For further details, please look here.

Blue Mountains areas of influence

Modifying alignment

The player starts off with 0 alignment for all factions (except Utumno, of which the player is always an enemy), so you may wander most regions of Middle-earth without coming to much harm - that is, until you first attack an NPC. Your first NPC kill is bound to influence the way a lot of factions feel about you, so keep this in mind! Of course, you can always undo your actions by losing or gaining alignment with various factions.

Alignment is gained or lost mostly by killing creatures, but also for performing certain actions. As of Public Beta 20, the addition of quests has allowed the player to be able to gain alignment for factions completing these quests with the help of the Red Book. When the player is talking to a mob with an exclamation mark above it, a quest will pop up on the player's screen. If this is accepted and completed, the player gains varying amounts of alignment to that faction, in addition to other rewards.

If the player wants to get alignment quickly, there are several ways to do so. See this article for more details.

Benefits of Alignment

Most alignment factions share common benefits for gaining alignment with them, such as:

• Good reputation with NPCs - most NPCs will treat you as a friend and not attack you if you have neutral or positive alignment. (Notable exceptions being the Wood-elves, Trolls, and Mordor, who only trust you above a certain alignment).
  • With this comes the ability to talk to the NPCs.
  • And therefore, the ability to accept mini-quests from the NPCs.
• To be feared by some NPCs if you have less than -500 alignment with their faction (they will flee if the player comes close to them, but some ranged units still shoot arrows or crossbow bolts when the player hasn't arrived the close range but is still in their shooting range). Not all faction NPCs show this behavior, strong faction NPCs like those of Gondor or Mordor won't flee even if a player has less than -500 alignment with them, and even among the NPCs of weaker factions there are some exceptions like Mirk-trolls, Mirkwood spiders, Trolls and Hill-trolls. Utumno creatures will never flee from any player, because of their permanent -66,666 alignment.
• Trading - most traders in the Mod will only trade with you above a certain level of alignment.
• Unit hiring - the unit commanders in the Mod require a certain alignment before they will let you hire their units. More advanced units require even more alignment.
  • The cost of hiring a unit goes down as your alignment increases.
  • When you achieve +1500 alignment, you can buy a Horn of Conquest from most unit commanders.
• Use of crafting tables - most factions have a crafting table on which you can craft their weapons, equipment, blocks, and other items. These tables can only be used with positive alignment.
• Shields - most factions have a shield which becomes available to wear at +1000 alignment.
• The use of chat titles for a specific faction. These are earned by getting +100 alignment with a certain faction. Most factions have multiple titles, depending on which you prefer. These are a fun way to show your achievements throughout Middle-earth.

The specifics of these things vary between factions. Some factions also have other benefits; see the table below for full details.

Commands

The command for altering your alignment is:

/alignment [set|add] <FACTION> <value> [player]

The player tag is optional and can be used to affect someone other than you. To find out the command name of the faction you want, look in the table below or press the tab key after typing /alignment set - it brings up a list of all possible command arguments.

You can also use ALL for the <FACTION> parameter to affect all factions at once.

The command to toggle, if areas of influence matter or not is:

/alignmentZones enable|disable

The command to check other players alignments (mostly for server admins) is:

/alignmentsee <player>

Alignment Entity Registry

You can register mobs from the vanilla game or other Mods with the LotR Mod's alignment system.

This is done in the file LOTR_EntityRegistry.txt found within the .minecraft/config folder. That file contains instructions on how to register a mob by adding a line of text to the file.

An example registration line would be:

name=Zombie,faction=GONDOR,targetEnemies=true,bonus=5

which would register vanilla Zombies with the Gondor faction, give them AI to target* enemies of the faction (such as Mordor Orcs), and award players a +5 alignment bonus with the appropriate enemy factions (Mordor and others) upon killing a Zombie.

*The registered mob is given targeting AI, but not attack AI. Thus, it will be able to select appropriate attack targets, but if it is not already capable of attacking a target, it won't actually be able to attack those selected targets.

List of all Alignment Factions

This Article/Section is Marked for Review! The relationships within the servants of Sauron (Angmar, Dol Guldur, Mordor) are needed to review. After you fix this article, please remove this template.

For more information on factions outside of how their alignment meter works, see the Factions page.

You may contribute to this page as you find out more about the new alignment system.

Want to know the best way to fight these factions? Look here!

History

Before factions were added in Public Beta 15, alignment was simply divided between "good" and "evil." In previous versions, the player would be awarded alignment for killing mobs of the opposite side, regardless of faction.

Gameplay mechanics of the Lord of the Rings Mod Basic Mechanics: Alignment • Books • Crafting • Equipment Modifiers • Factions • Farming Fellowships • Fishing • Gameplay Guide • Menu • Millstone • Pledging • Shire Reckoning Status Effects • Trading (Respawning, Travelling) • Undyeing • Unit Hiring • Unsmeltery The World: Biomes (Variants) • Clock • Compass • Fast Travel System • Roads Sky (Clouds, Weather, Northern Lights, Moon, Sun) Transportation (Mounts, Breeding) • Waypoints • World Types Achievements and Quests: Achievements • Mini-Quest • Shields • Titles • The Red Book • Tutorial In-Game Events: Bandits • Bloodmoon • Invasions • Player Respawning • Skirmishes • Thieves Combat: Banners • Boss Mechanics • Combat System • Conquest • Fort Besieging Tips • Fort Defense Tips Hired Units • Pacifism • Reforging • Table of Command • Tactics Against Factions • Weapons Brewing: Alcoholicity • Barrel • Brewing • Magical drinks • Poisoned drinks Portals: Elven Portal • Morgul Portal • Ring Portal • Utumno Other / Technical: Block/Item IDs • Commands • Configuration • Entities • Entity Alignment Registry List of All Miniquests • Names • NBT-data • Overview • Sounds • Spawners • Speech