The Nemesis System makes its highly anticipated return in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, expanding and evolving the fan-favorite feature from its predecessor. This time around, the system has been made more dynamic by giving orcs the ability to develop a sense of loyalty to Talion once dominated, or even betray him. Certain conditions can affect the A.I. in different ways such as if the player protects them in battle, leaves them to die, or how they're used on missions by the player. The system is more robust and can be influenced by a number of new and interesting factors.

In a more recent update to Shadow of Mordor, Monolith added in a mode called the Nemesis Forge. The mode read player save files and determined which orc was the player's greatest nemesis and which had become their greatest follower. Players could then opt to save these configurations and have them imported into the yet unreleased Middle-earth: Shadow of War game. While the system itself was fairly rigid and even hid how it calculated orc scores, players found workarounds and ways to manipulate the system in getting the orc they ultimately wanted to take with them into the new game.

Now that Middle-earth: Shadow of War is finally available on store shelves, here's how to import those saved Nemesis and Follower orcs.

Getting Started

Before this process can begin, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. In order to import any saved orcs, players must be playing Middle-earth: Shadow of War on the same platform that Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was played on.

Players will also need to ensure that they've played Shadow of Mordor within the past four months in order to have used the Nemesis Forge update. As previously stated, players don't have direct control on which orc is selected as the player's nemesis. Certain factors such as the number of battles, the number of times they've killed the player, and the number of times they've cheated death are major influences, however.

Follower scores work in a similar way. Again, players cannot directly change selected orcs, but any dominated captains can increase their score by being sent on special missions or succeeding in power struggle missions.

Nemesis Import

After booting up Shadow of War on the same platform as the previous Shadow of Mordor save, the import process is pretty straightforward as there's nothing players need to do specifically from the main menu.

Towards the end of Act 1, players will participate in an area known as The Arena, doing battle with multiple waves of orc champions. The final orc champion during this mission will actually be the player's imported Nemesis.

Follower Import

Just like the Nemesis, players don't actually need to worry about manually importing their follower from Shadow of Mordor either, provided all of the conditions have been previously met.

During the early part of Act 2, players will start a story mission called Damaged where players are tasked with defeating orc guards and rescuing a number of followers. One of the captured orcs the player needs to rescue during this mission is none other than their imported follower from Shadow of Mordor.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. There is currently no release date confirmed for the Slaughter Tribe DLC.