Grouping

Game Guides Topics: Getting Started, Game Terms, Commands, Character, Grouping, Music, Travelling

LOTRO has a number of different "grouping" options.

Some are for short-term combat - Fellowships and Raids -- others for longer term social activities -- Kinships and Friends.

Fellowship

See also Small Fellowship

A Fellowship is a group of up to 6 characters created to quest and explore Middle-earth together. It is a temporary grouping which does not survive between logins.

All of the Middle-earth can be explored being in Fellowship, with some exceptions. Many quests and instances require a full Fellowship with all members of a certain level or above, but some quests are Solo-only.

• A Fellowship can be formed at any time by anyone, who automatically becomes the Fellowship Leader
• A Fellowship can be disbanded at any time by the leader
• A Fellowship can be automatically formed with Friends, if both you and your friend have marked each other as Auto-Fellow, this can be done by going to the Friends tab under the Social Panel, right-click your friend, and choose for Auto-Fellow. The Fellowship will be formed as soon as the friend logs in. If you no longer want to automatically form a Fellowship with a friend, simply right-click you friend again and choose for Don't Auto-Fellow.
• A character creates a Fellowship by inviting others by typing /invite <character-name> in the "chat line", or,
  right-click a character's portrait and select Fellowship → Invite
• A leader can right-click its portrait and select actions to perform certain Fellowship actions, such as passing the leadership to another character, or disbanding the fellowship; anybody can do that to leave the Fellowship
  • Disbanding and reforming a Fellowship may be a necessary tactic if certain problems are encountered with instances, ...
  • Some menu options and actions are available/valid only within instances

• Fellowships can use the Fellowship Manoeuvre system to perform group specials
• Group buffs and effects will affect all Fellowship members within range

Raid

A Raid is typically a group of fellowships comprised of higher level or "level-capped" players. You can have up to 4 fellowships in a raid, so that means you can have up to 24 players in a raid -- i.e. 6, 12 or 24 players.

A Raid is a separate copy of a building's interior, a dungeon, or some piece of the game's landscape. Raids are similar to Instances, but are designed on a larger scale with encounters for two or more fellowships of players to complete. The encounters found within usually involve Arch-nemesis bosses that can require complex strategies.

No outside help by other adventurers can be rendered to those within a raid. Doing so allows game developers a greater ability to customize the details of the encounters and makes them more immersive, allowing multiple raids to enjoy the same content without interfering with each other.

• For complete details on Raids, visit: Raids

Kinship

Kinships (or Tribes) are groups of players that come together for a common, longterm purpose. (In other online roleplaying games, such organizations are often called Guilds or Clans). The purpose could be purely social, to pool resources, to take care of new players, to share a common philosophy, or many other reasons.

• For complete details on Kinships, visit: Kinships

Friends

You can create a friends list and an ignore list. The friends list can contain up to 50 players.

You will receive a message in the chat window when a member of your Friends list logs in or out of the game.

• friend -- usage: /friend add <name> : Adds a player to your friends list. friend remove <name> : Removes a player from your friends list. friend list : Displays the status of everyone in your friends list.
• ignore -- usage: /ignore add <name> : Adds a player to your ignore list. ignore remove <name> : Removes a player from your ignore list. ignore list : Displays the players you currently have ignored.

See: Commands#Character_Options for more related information.