The amazing mobile strategy game Lord of the Rings: Rise to War requires a plethora of strategic decisions. One of the first, and most important ones, is choosing the right faction that will suit your playstyle. In this faction guide, we’ll examine whether you should play the Rise to War Faction Lothlorien.
Lothlorien, also known as Lorien, is a forest and Elven realm near the lower Misty Mountains and belongs to the good alignment. They are located dead center on the world map. However, spawning is quite unique from other factions and this will be covered later in this guide.
Keep reading this LotR Rise to War Lothlorien Faction Guide for all the details on Lothlorien’s buffs, troops, location, commanders, and some basic strategy tips.
Lothlorien Faction Buff
Lothlorien’s faction buff, “elven wisdom”, grants a permanent +5% EXP gain for any of your Commanders. This is a HUGE advantage over any and all players on your server. Why? Quite elementary my dear. How do you win the game? How do you take out other players? How do you take territories, expand, upgrade, take the lead and stay ahead?
The answer to ALL those questions is a strong army. While building, gathering, and managing your kingdom and resources play a vital role in your quest, it’s undoubtedly the army that gets stuff done at the end of the day.
Indeed, your Commander is always the most vital part of this. Their level dictates the army’s strength, size, and speed. Therefore, having the core of the army grow 5% faster than anyone else adds up REAL quick, and it keeps giving from beginning to the very end.
Location of Lothlorien in Rise To War
Lothlorien is split into 3 main starting areas: Woodland Realm, Lorien, and Bruinen Vale. With a huge, gaping, unclaimed landmass between those 3 locations. This allows Lothlorien players to quickly carve out a crazy chunk of the map for themselves. They have the biggest number of uncontestable territories on their doorstep in the game by far.
This positioning allows them to capture many neutral camps securing powerful units early on. Additionally, they spawn directly on top of Dol Guldur. Lothlorien is a well-liked option for players across all Seasons and is therefore frequently full. Meaning that sometimes sadly you will need to pass on playing it, even if you really want to.
Seriously, Mordor, Rhun, and Rohan players can only look on in envy at all that free real estate. This leads us directly to the biggest problem of this placement: they WILL be envious of all that.
Lothlorien is surrounded by enemies from all sides. If you like action, you should pick this faction. You will be holding the line almost 24/7. Angmar to the North (1 territory away), Erebor North-East directly bordering their territory, Rohan to the South (1 territory away), Isengard to the South-West directly bordering Lothlorien, and then Arnor to the West, also 1 territory away.
Give it a month of a server being live, and you will also have Mordor, Rhun, and Gondor fighting on your doorstep. Honestly? This faction is an anxiety simulator, and if you cannot handle that, pick something else.
To add insult to injury, one of the regions, the Bruinen Vale, is completely cut off from the rest of Lothlorien by the Misty Mountains. You need to navigate a series of tunnels and neutral territories to establish any viable route.
The distance between all the territories makes it impossible to defend every side. Almost every invasion will effectively be an entire coordinated effort of a faction, versus the coordinated defense of 1/3 the force on the entire Lothlorien faction.
The Unique Units of Lothlorien
One other thing that is extremely nice about Lothlorien’s location, other than all the free space, is the ease of access to Eagles, Beornings, and Ents. Those are extremely powerful neutral units that you can hire upon capturing their camp.
Here’s how the stats of these deadly neutral units break down:
| Unit Name | Unit Size | Damage | HP | Defense | Speed | Siege Power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eagle | 5 | 200-300 | 900 | 29 | 300 | 45 |
| Beorning | 4 | 350-420 | 1000 | 75 | 62 | 600 |
| Ent | 2 | 600-700 | 2400 | 205 | 15 | 900 |
The strength of each can be quickly deduced by just looking over their stats. Beornings and Ents fulfill a very similar role. They are both tank units that excel at sieging, at the cost of being VERY slow, therefore making your Commander transverse the map at a snail’s pace.
The Eagles are the antithesis to that. They are way more fragile and unable to lay a proper siege. However, they move at Mach 10 and hit hard. Who cares about that Commander coming for your strategic buildings if he’s about to be intercepted and assassinated by a bunch of bald eagles?
The Tier 4 unique unit of Lothlorien is the Marchwarden ranged unit. Let’s take a quick look at their stats:
| Unit Name | Unit Size | Damage | HP | Defense | Speed | Siege Power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marchwarden | 50 | 59-60 | 66 | 41 | 99 | 17 |
Super impressive stats aside. Marchwardens being elven ranged units is kind of a big deal. As always, when you have an army of them, you also want a Commander that empowers one of these traits!
A lot of their pressure comes from their 2 awesome unique abilities. “Keen Eye” ability makes any dodge and avoid abilities of enemy army simply not work. At level 10, this has a 100% chance to activate! The second ability, “Indomitable” grants them immunity to any stuns from as early as ability level 1!
Their high speed, consistent damage, and clear advantage over stun and dodge-based armies make them quite the threat. Nonetheless, they need to be backed, or rather fronted, by some units that can tank the hits for them. Indeed, they are quite squishy when the enemy gets through to them on the battlefield.
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Lothlorien Starting Commander
The starting commander of Lothlorien is Haldir. His stats and skills are okay, and he happens to have some very nice skills that sadly come too late in his skill tree! There are way better commanders if you want to switch him out, ideally, someone from tier 2 or 3 with buffs to “elven” race units, like Legolas for example.
For further details on improving your Rise to War Commanders, check out our LotR Rise to War Commanders Guide.
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