I just updated to the latest version and checked out the new "secret" Palantir, and I noticed the message you get when you click it:
You ponder the orb for a while, but do not yet know how to make use of it.
Note the "yet" in the message, implying that you will be able to use it at some point! I'm thinking it will probably be linked to alignment (Probably with mordor/high elves). Regarding what it will actually be used for, I don't know. Maybe it will be used for smaller-scale map viewing (Think Journeymap) aas well as interconnecting all palantirs in a world.
Have been playing on a friends server and recently pledged to rohan. I moved into his base in gondor and we had a few invasions. Whenever I kill enemy factions (mordor, Angmar, etc) I get conquest points but not alignment, please help!
I was simply wondering, it is possible or advisable to have positive Near Harad Alignment while having Negative with Isengard? I would like to be able to have this avaliable since I use Dunland as a pouch and coin farm and if I cannot, Does anyone have any other factions for a pouch and coin farm?
As you probably know, the pillager captains wear banners on their backs in 1.14 and onwards, I was just thinking, that in renewed banner bearers should wear banners on their backs instead of carrying them. Furthermore I believe players should be able to also wear banners on their backs if they have high enough alignment with a faction and if a player is wearing a banner it gives a stat boost double that of a normal banner bearer.
To populate the land of Khand, I think that the Variags should be added. Not as regular inhabitants, but as mercenaries that can be hired to fight for a limited time. This may seem similar to the regular hired units of the mod, but the difference would be that the Variags would not fight to the death. They could perhaps be hired by players for other purposes. Maybe new and less experienced players can hire Variags as temporary bodyguards when traveling on roads. The reason why I am suggesting this way of implementing them is because Variag is a real life word that means mercenary people. The fact that Variag exists as a real word means that it is possible that Tolkien just simply wanted to use a more unique word than mercenary to describe some mercenaries from Khand. Due to being mercenaries, Variags would not exist as a faction, just simply as hirable mercenaries. Maybe more experienced players could hire them to hunt down other players.
Khand should also be populated by the Inhabitants of Khand, who would be the actual faction of Khand with structures and alignment. Khand would also be allies with Mordor, Rhudal, and the Gulflings.
Chests in generated structures should have a special 'ownerFaction' string assigned to them in the nbt (Player-placed chests will have no ownerFaction).
If the player opens a chest owned by a faction, they should lose 25 alignment of that faction, but ONLY if an NPC of that faction is present nearby (this is to prevent, say, Gondorian players from ransacking entire gondorian towns)
Some chests should be exempt from this (like the armour chests in fortresses)
To compensate for the reduced loot (due to less chests looted by the player) the loot in chests should be more valuable.
I was checking languages in my game in renewed, and to have fun I switched to upside down-English, but it didn't quite work as I expected. This is what happened:
Don't know if the picture is high enough resolution to see anything (it isn't when writing this), but the faction name is upside down, but not things such as my alignment status, alignment title, the co-ordinates below compass and (possibly) the biome indicator above the compass. Also, the compass could be upside down too, maybe? Not a big issue, and I wouldn't care too much if it wasn't fixed, but, it's still an issue! (BTW, the guidelines say that no matter what I'm trying to do, this is the wrong place. Is that right? It sure seems like the right place to me!)
In this post, I am going to provide every quote I can find that relates in any way to the Nameless Creatures of Middle-Earth.
The first is from Morgoth’s Ring:
”Out of the discords of the Music evil things appeared in Arda, which did not descend from any direct plan or vision of Melkor: they were not his children; and therefore, since all evil hates, they hated him too. The progeniture of things was corrupted” (Morgoth’s Ring).
The second is from The Hobbit:
”There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than fish. Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about” (The Hobbit).
The third is from The Lord of The Rings Trilogy:
“We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark tunnels. They were not made by Durin’s folk, Gimli son of Glóin. Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day. In that despair my enemy was my only hope, and I pursued him, clutching at his heel. Thus he brought me back at last to the secret ways of Khazad-dûm: too well he knew them all. Ever up now we went, until we came to the Endless Stair” (The Lord of The Rings).
I think that if the Nameless Creatures are ever added to the mod, they should be hostile to all mobs and/or neutral to all mobs. Regardless of good and evil alignment.
I was just wondering if you were thinking of integrating the vanilla mobs of 1.17 with LOTR Renewed when the caves and cliffs update comes out next summer? After the renewed LOTR gets caught up of course.
If you do decide to do this, I have a few ideas as to how it may work. In The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Rings, Tolkien mentions that there are nameless creatures that are more dangerous than orcs within the depths of the world.
This specific detail came to mind when Mojang showed off the new biome, the Deep Dark, and the new mob, the warden. It also came to mind during the mob vote a few years ago, when the Lurker was described. In a small way, I think that nameless creature could be tentatively applied to Guardians, Elder Guardians, Glow Squids, Silverfish, Piglins, Hoglins, Striders, Ghasts, Blazes, Magma Cubes, Endermen, vexes, Creepers, the Drowned, Strays, and Axolotl. I am unsure if Skulk Sensors would count Since I am unsure if they are living inanimate beings, or if they are just blocks.
I also think that vanilla spiders and cave spiders should be integrated with the Middle-earth spiders. I think it would create more of a challenge if you did this because it would make it harder to get or loose alignment.
Also, I think that you should add the generic undead minecraft mobs excluding phantoms. The reason why I don’t think phantoms would work is because they have a connection to dreams and Irmo is the Vala of dreams and I don’t see any loose example that could explain creating a hostile creature like that.
I hope you like my suggestions, as In my opinion I think that this is the most logical way of adding the nameless creatures mentioned since Tolkien gives very little details about them (in fact, in a very loose interpretation, Tom Bombadil could be considered a nameless creature, though I don’t really believe that). You could possibly have the nether based mobs such as Blazes spawning in the fire level of Utumno.
However, no matter what, in my opinion, the warden mob absolutely resembles the nameless creatures of Tolkien.
That’s all, I hope you read all that. I love the mod. Keep it up!
Updating the menu page to Update 35, I noticed, that the little red "plus" sign disappeared from the factions menu. It's purpose was, to display the area of influence of that faction.
Does someone know where it went? Is there still some possibility to display that information?
Version 35.1. Although I am male, I selected "Feminine Rank Ovverride: ON" in the options.
The achievement for +3000 blue mountains alignment was displayed as "Blue Dwarven Lord" in the achievements menu. It was also announced in the chat like this. Only the alignment meter displays "Blue Mountains Lady".
Is that intended like that? For me it's rather weird to read it like that.
So, you may take a hundred soldiers and attack a town, but instead of trying to save their lives, the citizens reach for their tools and run to suicide...
That shall be no more!
Every civilian NPC (yes, including elves) should now run from you when you have -500 alignment with their faction. Also, they should flee from elite units (uruks, tower guards, golden easterlings...) of enemy factions.
As a (off-topic?) sidenote, no more hiring civilian units from warlord NPC-s.
The current way of orcs fleeing makes them ridiculous in most cases, so I suggest, bring up the alignment requirement for them to flee from -500 to -1000. Also, orcish banner bearers & orc bombardiers should count as "stronger allies" & never flee themselves. Orcs would also attack if there are 10 or more of them in their attack radius.
Hobbit shiriffs are even more ridiculous than orcs. Going after a dark lord with a slingshot? At -500 alignment, shiriff raids would no longer occur and any existing shiriffs will also flee. Maybe they could be be replaced by ranger attacks that work with the same function, but that would go way too off-topic.
Many know I am kinda troubled by the fact that some players grind alignment for their factions by slaughtering the unarmed and untrained pleb of their enemies. From my understanding this behaviour does not fit in the policy and objectives of the mod. Now here's a new proposal on how to encourage more glorious ways to get alignment above the less honourable method of slaying peasants. And exactly that is what this is about: "What is the honour of slaying the insignificant folks of thy enemy?". In my opinion there is none, unless explicitely requested.
Proposal
Make players get no alignment from slaying the citizen NPCs, excluding traders and excluding the alignment rewards from kill quests. Traders are reknown folk and slaying them earns you the approval of your factions people, and if some fellow orc, elf, dwarf or human offers you a reward to slay common folk of thy enemy, and you fulfill their request, your people will honour you for your loyalty.
The alignment bonusses and penalties for warriors can thus be lowered from +2 to +1 respectively from -2 to -1. Overall this may encourage to improve on the distiction between types of warriors a player has to face and defeat to earn approval.
Both combined adjustments will make gaining alignment for some players more difficult and hopefully this will simply lead to a more strategic choice of activities, targetting more logical areas to strike against enemies and planning ahead, using quest assignments to ensure slaying foes is optimally rewarded by players' frens.
Feedback & possible additions
I would appreciate any feedback to this concrete proposal and based on further throughts and the feedback received the proposal may be improved and adjusted accordingly.
Related suggestions
Here's a number of suggestions related to the subject that may be of relevance when considering whether or not and how to implement the above proposal:
I was messing around with achievements and am somehow unhappy, with how it works since Public Beta 32. I did all my tests with /alignmentZones disable and friendly fire = on (attacking allies possible) so that nothing interferes.
I think, this change is responsible for the strage behaviour:
+ Added support for multiple ally and enemy factions in achievement
requirements, and thus more accurate sorting of obtainable achievements
I realized, that "slayer" achievements are suppressed in the list if the alignment is 0 or above. But it's always possible to get it:
If your starting alignment is 0 or lower, you get a pop-up notitication about that and the achievement is shown in the menu. If your alignment is above 0, no notitication is shown, but if your alignment sinks below 0, the "slayer" achievement will show up nonetheless.
Example:
/lotrAchievement remove all -> You get some initial achievements (first steps, entering biome, ...), that's correct.
/alignment set all 1 -> No Angmar achievements
Craft something on the Angmar table -> "Angmar Crafter" obtained and shown, that's correct.
Spawn and kill an Angmar Orc -> alignment 0, "Angmar Orc Slayer" obtained, but not notified, not shown, that's a bug. "Angmar Crafter" is still shown, that's correct.
/alignment set all -1 -> "Angmar Orc Slayer" is now shown, that's ok. "Angmar Crafter" is no longer shown, that's a bug.
In my eyes, the "slayer" achievements should always be shown and notified, as they can be obtained via setting "friendly fire" to "on", independently of the alignment.
Also, all once obtained alignments should be shown in the list, even if you couldn't obtain them any longer due to your current alignment (e.g. the use of a certain crafting table).
At the moment anyone can hire any unit at any time provided they have sufficient alignment and regardless the alignment they have with other factions. This means that a 'Gundabad' character with +3500 with Gundabad can hire Black Uruks from Mordor, even if he only has +600 alignment with Mordor. Also, a player with +4000 Gondor alignment and only +700 with Lindon, can still hire High Elven Cavalry and Banner Bearers. This is odd, and I believe it breaks the roleplay immersion and makes the 'unique' / elite units of all factions less unique in the game. The system doesn't promote 'working for specific alignment' for a player to hire units. For many good aligned characters in the north, endless Gundie slaughter simply suffices at the moment.
My basic notion is this: Elite military forces will only swear allegiance to a leader that proves his or her loyalty with their faction.
Proposal
Make elite and banner bearer units only hirable to players for which the alignment they have with that faction is clearly the highest of any alignment the player has.
Make the hiring of 'tier 2' NPCs (not elite or banner bearer, but no 'levy troops / cannon fudder' either), also dependent on the relative alignment a player has with the faction: require at least 'second highest alignment with any faction'.
To ensure the players loyalty is 'clear', and to prevent exploits from regular 'allegiance switches', for hiring elite units the difference between maximum alignment and second highest alignment a player has, must be higher than some treshold value. This 'elite allegiance treshold' should be faction dependent. For weaker / more neutral factions like Dunland and most sub-factions, it should be 100 and for stronger / more extremely aligned factions like Mordor and Lindon, it should be 500 or comparable.
Purpose
To improve:
1) specific usage of the faction diversity as offered in the mod;
2) strategic choices by players when hiring units / composing their fighting forces;
3) roleplay immersion by limiting the options players have in hiring units, dependent on the alignment profile they have acquired in-game.
Feature mechanics
In the GUI, the player is already able to see whether or not the units (s)he wishes to hire are hireable to him/her or not. Now, there are two requirement: a player must have the minimum alignment required for hiring and have enough in cash in his/her inventory. The proposed changes will add requirements for a player to meet to be able to hire higher tier units.
Two new checks must be added for all higher tier units. These require storing four parameters per player (already stored): the faction with which the player has highest alignment, the faction with which the player has second highest alignment and the two corresponding alignment values.
Also, for each faction, the value for the 'elite allegiance treshold' must be defined. Here are some example values for this parameter:
Wood-land Realm 350; High Elves and Galadhrim 300; Dorwinion 200;
Finally, each NPC will get a new identifier, tagging the NPC as 'elite', 'regular' or 'levy'. Based on that tag, either no additional check, or one or both of the new checks must be performed.
For the 'elite' units (incl. banner bearers), a check will be done on whether the 'players highest alignment faction' is equal to the faction of the unit. If 'true', a second check will be done to see if the difference in alignment the player has between his 'highest alignment faction' and the second highest, is bigger than the defined 'elite allegiance treshold' value. If 'true', the player can hire the unit.
For the 'regular' units, a check will be made whether the players two highest alignment factions are equal to the units faction. If 'true', the player can hire the unit.
For 'levy' units only the already present checks will be performed.
Examples of unit categorisation
Here's a few examples of which units would be tagged as 'elite' or 'levy':
Woodland Realm: cavalry & banner bearer are elite; warriors are regular; elves & scouts are levy.
Mordor: black uruks, olog-Hai, warg bombardiers & banner bearers are elite; orc bombardiers and war riders are regular; orcs and archers are levy.
Durin's Folk: boar riders and banner bearers are elite; warriors and axe throwers are regular; non warrior dwarves are levy.
Related proposals
As indicated in this post, the basic notion regarding the availability of hired units to players, also relates to more than the proposal presented above. One related proposal I wish to mention as relevant in this context is this:
The mechanic discussed extensively in that thread, provides the opportunity to create a mechanistic cap on the number of hired units a player can maintain, or 'how large a standing army a player can support'. I believe it deserves more thorough and open/public thinking to find acceptable ways to implement it ... in that thread.
Additionally, I feel that adding more and significantly higher minimum requirements for crafting faction specific gear will certainly contribute to the purpose indicated above, notably point 1). As I feel this is obvious, and as It has been brought forward earlier in a number of other threads, I suspect the mod team is already aware of that option. I suspect that either they will never implement it, or it's planned in some way.
As I 'witnessed' quite a number of occassions where players get easy alignment, experience orbs (for what they're worth) and loot from killing numerous low tier NPCs of their enemies in enemy lands, I pondered there appears to be a still existing fundamental flaw in the 'invasion' mechanics that simply may have been overlooked for quite some time.
Examples:
It makes no sense that Dale invades the Rhúdel, while there are no defensive raids when an enemy player or force enters Dale and starts killing off its populace. Same holds for many other faction lands where civilians roam.
It makes no sense that Vintner Guards launch an attack on the accidental thief that hits a grapevine, while the home military forces of Dorwinion remain conspicuous by their absence when a Mordor aligned player comes slaughtering the locals gathered in the open field near a bathhouse, wine cellar or garden.
Proposal
Now, apparently the mechanic is already recognised and implemented, as the Hobbit Shirriffs are able to launch defensive raids in their lands. So, my proposal is simple: make defensive raids of native forces spawn with some tbd chance of occurence whenever civilians or home miltary units are being attacked by an enemy force. That could be either a player with low enough alignment (say -100 or lower), or a player with a number of hired units.
Note that alternatively, one could think of ways to make low tier, passive NPCs act differently, or alarm military units. That would be an essentially different approach. I presented a brief overview of notions to consider for that approach in this post below.
Feature mechanics and related proposals
The feature mechanic would be very much similar to the earlier proposed counter-invasions (see links below), but I figure the motive for a defensive raid is different and this may justify a different composition of the responding force. So, both trigger and resulting action will be specific. A counter-invasion will be triggered based on an invasion of an enemy NPC force, while a defensive raid is triggered by either the murderous presence of players and/or hired NPCs. The more hired NPCs accompanying a player, the higher the chances a defensive raid will spawn, and the stronger the responsive force should be. As the Hobbit Shirriffs are already enabled to perform defensive raids, I figure it shouldn't be a daunting task to implement them for more factions.
[Endorsed] On Raids and Invasions : Basically the same notion as mine, but with other concrete specifics. (Sorry, I discovered this thread only in January 2018!)
Favors and Helping Invasions : Check my interpretation and how defensive raid spawning could be made dependent on the alignment a player acquired from performing quests for a faction.
Urgency for gameplay balance
The urgency of this improvement is quite high as far as I'm concerned, as it contributes to balancing the chances of players ability to acquire aligment in enemy lands, especially with the upcoming feature 'spheres of influence'.
Combination with spheres of influence
When combined with the introduction of that feature you could even consider to have defensive raids spawn within a 'sphere of influence' rather than just a factions home biome. As I indicated on the mods Facebook page, I believe it may be worthwhile to consider biome-dependent spheres of influence, either instead of or in addition to the geonometrical spheres. The mechanic of defensive raids could be combined with any option imo.
Edit: Added links to related endorsed threads regarding behaviour of weak NPCs.
I set up a server to play the LOTR minecraft mod with my friend, and we steadily gained alignment; we had about +2700 with the Rangers of the North when we stopped playing for a few months.
After that period, I took the world folder from that world and made a new server for it, to try the new Beta 30.5 (we had been using 29.6). However, the world was uncompatible so I deleted that new server and made another new server with the same Forge version we had been using all the time (1558) and Beta 29.6 of the LOTR minecraft mod.
I took the backup of the old world folder and used that in the server; it worked, everything started up fine, everything was exactly the same - except the alignments, which had for some reason all reset to 0.
Could somebody suggest why this happened, and more useful, a way to retreive the old alignments?
For now, you don't get any reward by defeating an invasion, without considering alignment points or loot gained by killing its troops of course.
So, I have an idea that will make fighting invasions a bit more rewarding.
After all the waves of enemies are defeated, the hovering sword (that one hovering above ground, marking the invasion point) falls to the ground like a spear does. Then any player that hits the sword at least once in 10 seconds (the bosses have a similar system to grant its achievement to several players), will get an alignment reward (if it's a Gundabad invasion, you'll get alignment points with factions that you normally gain alignment by killing Gundabad orcs) and then once the timer runs out, the sword explodes, dropping coins, ingots, food, memes, flamethrowers or anything that the mod team considers a balanced reward, in a radius of the explosion, marking the end of the invasion.
The quantity of the reward depends on the number of players. If 10 players hit the fallen sword, more loot will spawn than if only 5 players had hit it. But the reward shouldn't scale directly, like 40 coins per player, nope, let me explain:
Example (these values are for the purpose of this example alone): 10 players get 10000 coins, while 5 players get 8000. Surely the 10 players got more loot, but each of them will only get a share of 1000 coins, while each of the 5 players will get 1600 coins. I'm sure that Mevans & Co. will be able to transform this into a math curve or something.
Now, it may happen that a greed player collects more loot that the others (that's why the loot should drop in a radius of the sword), but that's the problem of that player group and they should decide how they're going to share it. If things get violent, well...
How it works:
Late additions:
> Things could be handled in a different way: Once the invasion is defeated, the hovering sword falls to the ground and several chests spawn, with loot and an item called "Battle Trophy", an item that you can exchange for alignment points with a commander, or any other kind that sells troops. Also, commanders could send you in quests to acquire Battle Trophies, and the reward could vary from coins, troops or even the commander itself! There could be Orcish, Elvish, Dwarvish and (Evil and Good) Mannish Battle Trophies, to avoid the player defeating an Haradrim invasion and then selling the Battle Trophy to a Mordor Commander, that wouldn't make much sense.
As some of you might know, I play a pacifist on the server. This means, that you refrain from killing mobs and try to gain positive alignment with every faction (except for Utumno and Huorns, which are hostile to anyone). You can do this by completing mini-quests, which do not always involve killing enemies, but also gathering supplies.
When it comes to Fangorn faction, you'll run into a difficulty: They don't give out quests. The only way to increase it, is to kill their enemies. So a pacifist could:
1) Raise your alignment with all other factions. Then kill enemies of Fangorn, which would lower your alignment to some factions. Do more quests for those factions.
This method works already, but it contradicts the ways of pacifism. Therefore I suggest one of the following:
2) Introduce mini-quests for Fangorn given out by Ents.
3) Or add another way of gaining alignment there: E.g. plant a tree sapling in Fangorn gives you +0.1 / +1 / +10 / +100 alignment there.
4) Or add another way, like performing a certain ritual there: E.g. digging an exact round lake of 100 blocks diameter, exactly 11 blocks deep, filling it completely with water, throwing in a certain flower at full moon, while 20 Ents are standing around, which results in Fangorn sprouting a very rare tree and even rarer flowers and give you +500 alignment to them.
The last one is a joke, but it could be something less complicated.
