| “ | Here do I swear fealty and service to Gondor, and to the Lord and Steward of the realm, to speak and to be silent, to do and to let be, to come and to go, in need or plenty, in peace or war, in living or dying, from this hour henceforth, until my lord release me, or death take me, or the world end. | ” |
–-The Return of the King, Minas Tirith | ||
Pledging is a gameplay mechanic that allows the player to swear allegiance to a faction of their choice and gain certain benefits as a result. Only one faction can be pledged to at a time.
Pledge Service[]
To be able to pledge, make sure that you are not already pledged to another faction. Otherwise cancel that pledge first (see below). Then, you'll need to reach at least +100.0 alignment to the faction of your choice. To do this you can either do mini-quests for them or kill their enemies in their Area of Influence. Then open the Middle-earth menu (normally by pressing "L"), select the factions button or press "F", and scroll across to the desired faction.
On the first page for the chosen faction, you'll find a red seal in the lower-left corner. This seal is greyed out if you don't have the necessary alignment; otherwise, you are able to click on it.
After clicking on the seal, you may get an error message saying that it is not possible to maintain good relations with the faction's mortal enemies. In this case, both alignments will be reduced until one of them reaches zero (this can be turned off via the configuration file). This may also reduce your alignment to the desired faction below the needed +100.0, meaning that you need to work towards increasing it again. It's also possible, that you need to wait for a cooldown from a previous pledge to subside.
After successfully clicking the seal, you will get a final confirmation page, shown to the right. Clicking the red seal on this page signifies your allegiance to that faction. You will hear a fanfare play to celebrate your pledge.
Doing this for the first time will earn you the achievement "Here Do I Swear". The first page of the respective faction displays "pledged". The seal now allows you to cancel the treaty.
Benefits[]
- Higher ranks of the pledged faction become available to the player (including the respective achievements).
- Some elite hired units are only available for pledged players.
- Captains sell their units to you much cheaper (if at all).
- Players are able to conquer land for their faction.
Breaking the Pledge[]
Breaking the pledge can happen in three ways:
- killing an NPC from the pledged, or an allied, faction
- losing too much alignment to the pledged faction
- breaking the treaty willingly
If you kill an allied NPC while pledged, the warning shown to the right will appear. If you kill another one within twenty minutes, your faction loses faith in you.
If your alignment to your pledged faction sinks below the threshold of +100.0, the faction will cancel the treaty. This can happen by performing evil deeds (in the eyes of your faction) or by gaining positive alignment to their mortal enemies with the alignment-drain option "on".
You may want to break the pledge willingly, despite having enough alignment. Open the Middle-earth menu (normally by pressing "L"), select the factions button, and scroll along to the desired faction. Clicking the red seal will cause the picture to change to a broken one. After a final confirmation page (shown below), the contract will be broken and a sad fanfare announces this.
Breaking a pledge in this way will cause the following message to appear in the chat bar:
Penalties[]
Whichever way a pledge is broken, the following penalties will be received:
- The player will lose alignment with the pledged faction. The exact amount lost will vary, as it depends on the alignment level at the time of breaking the pledge: alignment will fall down to the level of the rank two below the current rank, unless this would put the alignment below half the pledge level (i.e. 50 in most cases) in which case it will be capped there. Depending on the previous alignment, this can be quite a large loss.
- Example 1: Breaking a pledge at +100.0 alignment (the pledge level) - since the rank two below this is less than half of the pledge level (+50.0), your alignment will be capped at +50.0. This is a loss of -50.0, that is -50%.
- Example 2: Breaking a pledge to Mordor at +300.0 alignment - this lies within the Slavedriver rank, so your alignment will fall to the rank two below, which is Snaga at +50.0. This is a loss of -250.0 alignment, that is -83.%.
- Example 3: Breaking a pledge to Durin's Folk at +1800.0 alignment - this lies within the Lord / Lady rank, so your alignment will fall to the rank two below, which is Champion at +500.0. This is a loss of -1300.0 alignment, that is -72.2%.
- Example 4: Breaking a pledge to Gundabad at +10000.0 alignment - despite being very high this value still lies within the Chieftain rank, so your alignment will fall to the rank two below, which is Scourge at +500.0. This is a loss of -9500.0 alignment, that is -95%!
- The pledge cooldown will be set to quite a considerable amount of time, in which you are not able to pledge to another (or the same) faction. The higher your alignment was prior to breaking the pledge, the longer the cooldown will be; it can range from 30 minutes to a maximum of 180.
When the cooldown time has passed, the message shown to the right will appear in the chat bar.
Commands[]
These commands can be used to work with pledges. The available commands differ between versions; Renewed has a more complete set.
Legacy[]
The following command can be used to set the cooldown time:
/pledgeCooldown <ticks> [player]
Renewed[]
In Renewed, there is a dedicated pledge command with more extensive functionality.
The following command sets a player's (or players') pledge to a particular faction:
/pledge set <player> <faction> [force]
The force keyword is optional - if this is present it will set the pledge to the given faction regardless of whether the player(s) meets the usual alignment requirements to pledge to this faction. Otherwise, the command will only succeed if the player meets the usual requirements.
To set one or more players' pledge cooldown time:
/pledge cooldown <player> <seconds>
Note that this takes the time in seconds, unlike the Legacy command which uses game ticks (1 second = 20 ticks).
To query whether a player is currently pledged to a faction:
/pledge query <player>
This will display a message indicating whether or not the player is pledged to any faction, and the name of the faction if so. The command returns a value of 1 if there is a pledge or 0 if not.
Data Packs[]
In the renewed version of the mod, factions' pledging mechanics can be customised using data packs. Each faction's JSON file provides the definition of all its ranks, which includes the definition of which rank is the pledge level rank. Data packs can redefine this in order to change the pledge rank requirement for a particular faction or define it for a new custom faction.
History[]
Pledging mechanics were added as part of Update 35, the Pledge and Conquest Update. The feature was ported to renewed in Renewed Snapshot 2.9.
Gameplay mechanics of the Lord of the Rings Mod
Basic Mechanics:
Alignment •
Books •
Crafting •
Equipment Modifiers •
Factions •
Farming The World:
Biomes (Variants) •
Clock •
Compass •
Fast Travel System •
Roads 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 Brewing:
Portals:
Other / Technical:
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