How to Choose a Fellowship

[Blue-Iris]

The best fellowship for you is one that's compatible with your playing style. New members who are still finding their way around may not be comfortable with an FS which is well established, very competitive and requires participation in tournaments and the spire. If you're not very competitive, you might be a better fit with an FS that describes themselves as more laid back.

Active players will find their best fit with an FS which shows growth. You can look them up in Elvenstats to see their growth rate. An FS which communicates often via chat and messages is a plus. These groups are more likely to plan a strategy for the fellowship adventures and help each other with trades by posting trade requests in chat.

If your FS doesn't do this, you may have an inactive FS. If you don't get much neighborly help from your FS members, it may be that they have become inactive. If the archmage of your FS doesn't participate in it via chats or messages and shows no signs of leadership, your archmage may be no longer playing. These are signs that you may need to move on.

Add your tips on what to look for in choosing a fellowship.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I'd add that you should look ahead, and consider joining a FS that you want to be in eventually.

You may not want to set up your city to do ~1600 tournament points every week or to complete the spire right now, but if you join a FS that will never get to 10 chests and never reach the gold spire, you'll be stuck and will miss out on some of the best rewards in the game.

Sure, you could move on to a 10-chest/Gold FS later, but you probably won't. You'll make friends wherever you go and will most likely not leave them. The servers are full of fellowships that have 3-4 inactive who haven't logged in in over a month, 3-4 high achievers who would complement any top 20 FS and then a bunch in the middle who are forever casuals.
It's not a "bad" experience for those players, but it could be better.

 

[Darielle]

I would look for a fellowship that is in desperate need of my boosts, particularly if I am in an area of the map where there is a glut of active players with my boosts (as I am). That was one of the most important things to me. When I saw on Elvenstats that my current fellowship really needed two of my boosts, and had a lot of players with the other things I needed, I knew I'd find good trading partners to move ahead in my game, and I have.

 

[samidodamage]

I encourage players to look for a FS with members scores really spread out. That usually means players with large cities in higher chapters as well as smaller newer cities in the lower chapters. That's especially important if you're looking at FS's that get 10 chests and are working towards Gold Spire since you'd really like to reap those rewards yourself at some point. The spread of city sizes usually means the FS is willing to help newer cities learn ways to improve their personal performance as well as more familiar with small city struggles. FS's with all large cities may be too removed from early chapter challenges and all small cities will usually all be struggling with the same challenges and thus less help to one another.

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

I would add that you don't need to stick with the same fellowship your entire time here. You can keep the friends you have when you leave one fellowship for another if you aren't a jerk about it.

I would also add, if you have certain goals and you don't see the fellowship you are in moving in the direction you hoped, then speak up and COMMUNICATE... because sometimes you will find like minds that move forward in a positive way.

The fellowship you join can EVOLVE and respond to changing needs if you work at it.

 

[ekarat]

I would look for a fellowship that is in desperate need of my boosts, particularly if I am in an area of the map where there is a glut of active players with my boosts (as I am). That was one of the most important things to me. When I saw on Elvenstats that my current fellowship really needed two of my boosts, and had a lot of players with the other things I needed, I knew I'd find good trading partners to move ahead in my game, and I have.

Are boosts really all that important? I've never had trouble trading with my neighbors. Then again, I do have neighbors to trade with, rather than just being in a dead zone -- to be fair, some people are stuck in a dead zone. But if you aren't, then balanced boosts should be a secondary concern.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Are boosts really all that important? I've never had trouble trading with my neighbors. Then again, I do have neighbors to trade with, rather than just being in a dead zone -- to be fair, some people are stuck in a dead zone. But if you aren't, then balanced boosts should be a secondary concern.

IMO only for very small or new fellowships.
Set buildings totally wrecked that years ago too.
I make WAY more non-boosted goods from my sets than from my factories. like 5-7x as much iirc

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

In many ways, I think Fellowship choice is about the individual and the way they want to play. If you're a casual player, being in a high octane group isn't going to increase your enjoyment, the opposite is also true. Also to be considered... do you want a social fellowship? Chatty or quiet?

I think that there should be 'starter fellowships' so that new people are able to just be in a computer generated FS that allows them the benefits until they have time to get out there and see what sort of group they would like to be in.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I think that there should be 'starter fellowships' so that new people are able to just be in a computer generated FS that allows them the benefits until they have time to get out there and see what sort of group they would like to be in.

I like that idea. Although there are so many FS out there that there is probably one to suit every playstyle possible, there is simply no good way to find them. A temporary auto-generated FS once you build your trader or even earlier if you show X activity could work as a stop-gap until INNO gets their act together and implements a matchmaking system like every other modern game.

 

[Henroo]

In many ways, I think Fellowship choice is about the individual and the way they want to play. If you're a casual player, being in a high octane group isn't going to increase your enjoyment, the opposite is also true. Also to be considered... do you want a social fellowship? Chatty or quiet?

I think that there should be 'starter fellowships' so that new people are able to just be in a computer generated FS that allows them the benefits until they have time to get out there and see what sort of group they would like to be in.

A tournament and/or spire focused fellowship can make their requirements fairly simple. Basically they can say score X number of points in the tournament every week and Y number of points in Spire every week. It gets a little more tricky with regard to a social fellowship. What constitutes that? Multiple players will disagree on that. What is overly chatty to 1 player might be just right to a different player.

 

[Wingolauchsik Kitchkinet]

Apologies if this is the wrong thread for my question. I would like to get into a fellowship, but the fellowship icon in my city is gray/silver/monotone (whatever you want to call that color), and when I click on it, nothing happens. I'm still in chapter 1. Is there a requirement I haven't achieved yet to activate this?

 

[samidodamage]

@Wingolauchsik Kitchkinet
There is a research tech in Ch2 you have to activate to allow you to join an FS. This is a recent change; @helya explained it to us in this post buried in another thread:
FS tech now in Ch2

 

[Wingolauchsik Kitchkinet]

@samidodamage Interesting. Through reading more of the information through this page and the Gems of Knowledge, I discovered that pressing the F key will open the FS window and allow me to apply to a fellowship. Could this be a backdoor? Hmmm.

 

[kriz-te]

How I found my FS was a tumble - randomly applied to the ones the game suggested, finally clicked on one that was set to automatically accept people, endured the ghost town crickets for longer than I should have before leaving, by then a few active players in my neighborhood had been visiting me back w help, so I looked at THEIR fellowships, applied to one that wasn't full and had a newby friendly description. they've been super welcoming and pointed me to places like elvengems and elvenarchitect, might have honestly quit if I hadn't made that connection, but now I'm hooked.

 

[NightshadeCS]

^^^ This is a perfect illustration of how important fellowships are in this game. Finding a group you gel with is sometimes hard work, but well worth the effort, as it will make everything after that much easier.

 

[Patchella]

I agree it’s difficult to find an FS, there are not too many ways and it’s not very intuitive to the new player.

After a while, it becomes apparent, the different avenues of finding an FS.. word of mouth is often best but that’s after you’re already in an FS.. the forums here are good if there’s a good post in the FS Seeking members thread, and looking at neighbours’ FS rosters and starting a conversation with that neighbour and asking questions as @kriz-te says.. that’s how I started, too..