Some creatures are not alligned to any of the factions and killing them will not harm your faction in any way, but when it comes to taking on mobs that belong to one of the factions, your actions will have a bearing on how you are percieved by both the faction you are fighting and their opposite number - so if you kill redeemed mobs you will not only lose faction with the redeemed, but in most cases you will also gain faction with their enemies the unredeemed and vice-versa.

Each mob has a limited number of factionpoints. If your own faction is greater than that number, you will not gain as many (if any) faction points from killing it, so if you continually pick on mobs that are far below you in level you are unlikely to pick up faction points as quickly as you will by taking on mobs that are higher up their factions chain-of-command.

To effect your faction with the guardian of the shadows faction you will have to take on the chaotic mobs that populate the 'brink' areas of the various shadowlands zones. The guardians work for Ergo who is at pains to try and stem the tide of the brink beasts that claw away at the edges of the Shadowlands - so getting rid of any of them will put you firmly in his good books. The two main types of mob you are looking for are hecklers and horrors - although be warned these mobs hit very, very hard!

Can I tell if a mob has a faction?

If you target a mob and press 't' you will be shown the normal information screen, but if you can detect their faction it will show you how the creature percieves you.

So When does it effect me?

Once your faction reaches the 'wanted' level with any of the factions they will agro you on site, so its worth bearing in mind that eventually you will find yourself in a situation where you cannot safely pass both redeemed and unredeemed mobs, as you progress and become alligned to one of the factions, you will find the mobs of the other faction blocking your progress in the later zones.

Faction and Shadowknowledge

Faction also dictates if you can use certain items or abilities, and ultimately it dictates the amount of Shadowknowledge that you gain after you stop earning exp at level 200 and require Shadowknowledge for the path between 200 and 220.

If you are neutral your amount of SK per kill will depend on your Guardians faction. This is gained from brink mobs like Hecklers and horrors.

If you are Omni or Clan you will need good faction with the unredeemed or redeemed respectively. The key to raising your faction is finding the mobs that yield the best faction gains. This comes from the redeemed and unredeemed bosses in the temples in each area.

To be honest this is only a concern after level 200 and you will want to raise this around that time. You can gain more faction from one or two raids on these boss mobs then by killing thousands of smaller factioned mobs along the way so whilst you may gain faction along the way as you level if you don't do these raids you will barely see your faction go up over 10k. This would lead to much slower levelling after 200 so you will want to boost it up by raiding the faction bosses in Penumbra and then Inferno.

Spawning the faction bosses

First up in order to guarantee success at this you will need six insgnias for the relevant mob that you will need to kill unsided mobs to gain as they are no-drop and you don't want to have to kill mobs of your faction! So to spawn Vanya in Penumbra for example you will need to prepare six insignias of Vanya in advance.

The method for this is the same in each area. Go to the temple of your opposing faction and find the prophet / ecclisiast mobs in the 75% rooms.

Kill that mob and an acolyte will spawn, chat to that mob (it will despawn within five mins so thats why you must have the insignias ready!) and a mob called an 'Omega' will spawn with a bunch of adds. This Omega is a human like mob who represents the faction. Kill the Omega and the faction boss will spawn with another load of adds. Kill the boss mob for your faction.

All sounds very easy doesn't it? Well once you get to doing these in Penumbra and Inferno the other mobs spawned are hard enough to handle in the numbers they spawn let alone taking on the bosses so a good raid team is really required. Different people have different tactics for these raids so make sure you talk to other players first when you join these raids!

Eventually you will 'cap out' on faction from a certain temple as mentioned above and you will have to move on if you want to improve your Shadowknowledge rates.

Conclusion

So there you have it...there are choices to make now, make sure you make yours wisely!