Middle-earth Shadow of War: How to Recruit Orcs to Your Army

How to Recruit Orcs and Ologs in Shadow of War

Middle-earth: Shadow of War ups the ante with the battles, adding tons of orcs to your own personal Mordor army. You’re going to want to have a lot of orcs behind you as you face Sauron’s wrath, even if they’re all shady ingrates at the end of the day. Here’s how you can get them to join your ranks.

To recruit orcs in Shadow of War, you have a variety of options. First and foremost, you need to wait until you’re at the part in the game where you receive the dominate ability. You’ll begin by recruiting Bruz, and after that point, you’ll have “Dominate.” The easiest way to keep getting captains is right on the battlefield. If you’re wondering how to come into contact with captains, you can encounter them randomly on the battlefield or you can actually track them. Set a tracker on them by heading into the menu, going to the Army tab, and selecting any captain you wish to hunt down, placing a map marker on where you need to go to face them.

Once you do face an orc, begin the recruitment process by hurting an enemy captain enough until they’re “broken.” It’ll be obvious, as you’ll see green above their heads with the word “broken” right there for you to see. Next, hold down the button you use to dominate (Circle on PS4, B on Xbox One) until the bar is filled up and you’ll grab them by the head. Select the “Recruit” command and that’s all you need to do to recruit orcs.

If the “Recruit” option isn’t highlighted, it means that they’re too high of a level. You won’t be able to coerce anyone that’s a higher level than you. So, what you need to do is “Shame” them and they’ll drop in level enough. However, this means they’ll escape the battle and you’ll need to do all the tracking down again to actually recruit them.

And that’s all you need to know to recruit orcs for your army. For more on Shadow of War, be sure to check out our wiki.