Parties (General Help)

The Two Towers is a multiplayer game, so groups of people will often want to work together while adventuring and fighting in Middle Earth. To help with this, a very useful party system is available, managed by the 'party' command: see 'help party' to learn the exact syntax. This help document explains some of the features in more detail.

Joining and leaving parties

A party is first formed by the leader with the use of 'party form' command. Any player can form a party. Once the party is ready, the leader can invite other players to join ('party invite'). They can either accept the invitation ('party join') or ignore it; it will expire after 60 seconds. Note that new players (levels 1-3) cannot invite high level players (level 4+) to their parties.

Once in a party, a player may leave it by either using 'party leave', or when they are forcefully removed by the leader. Quitting or going linkdead makes one leave their party too. If the leader quits, however, the whole party is disbanded. This can be prevented, though, by promoting a member (using 'party promote') to the secondary leader. The secondary leader will become the actual leader when the former one quits, dies, or goes link-dead.

Moving with the party

Party members will automatically follow their leader when he or she moves around. When moving through difficult terrain, the leader may be forced to slow down to allow his or her party members to keep up. Leaders with a high wilderness skill are better at finding good routes, so rangers and sniffers make the most effective party leaders.

There are times when a party member will not be able to follow his or her leader. Movement that requires special actions will usually separate a leader from his or her party members. And naturally, an unconscious party member will not be able to follow the leader.

While the party moves, the amount of messages received can be quite large, quickly filling up the screen. To reduce these to minimum, use the 'settings' command to disable 'party movement messages'; this setting is available from the 'command settings' submenu.

Talking with your party

The party command provides two arguments ('party say' and 'party emote') to let party members communicate with themselves. These says and emotes form a sort of private channel, and cannot be overheard by people not within the party. They are, however, restricted in the way that regular says are: only members in the same room as you will hear what you 'party say'.

The color of party says and emotes can be configured within the color command. This can be very useful to help highlight important party messages that happen in the midst of combat or while travelling a long way.

Splitting gold

One of the most common purposes of parties is to 'gold' together. To make this case easier, the party system provides options to split gold evenly between party members. This can be done either manually or automatically. With manual mode, the leader or any other member can 'party split' a certain amount of gold. The automatic mode has three variants: splitting gold from corpses, from shop sales, or from both. In each variant, when the player receives gold from the respective source, the income is split evenly between other members.

Note, however, that party members who are not in the same room as the person who splits the gold will not receive their share. Instead, their part will be saved as a 'debt' for the one who initially was splitting the gold. Outstanding party debts can be viewed at any time, even when not in a party anymore, with the 'party debts' command. They can be automatically paid with 'party pay' or, if it is decided so, forgotten about with 'party nopay'.