Alignment

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 race-specific crafting tables, ability to trade and hire units, and eventually the availability of quests.

As of Beta 15, the old alignment system has been rewritten and replaced with a new faction-based system,  more depth do the decisions of the player and making it far more realistic. For example, killing one orc in Mordor has no effect on your Hobbit alignment (the Hobbits simply would not know or care if you were killing orcs in a far-off land), and the interactions between different NPCs are more complex - for example, Dunlendings can fight most types of Orcs, and will not fight Hobbits or Rangers.

The player starts off with 0 alignment for all factions, so you may wander Middle-earth (excluding Mirkwood and Mordor) 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. In the  a quest system will be added which will allow you to gain alignment in more interesting and varied ways: for example, you will be able to gain alignment with the Hobbits of the Shire without ever  the Shire, by  small tasks for various Hobbits.

The command for altering your alignment is /alignment [set|add] [FACTION] [value]. On multiplayer servers  , you can add a player name as an additional argument to specify which player's alignment is to be changed. (To find out the command name of the faction you want, press the tab key    - it brings up a list of all possible command arguments.)

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