Guide: Faction for Dummies - A general Overview
Lots of players returning to AO that were 200 or those who have just dinged 200 are confused on how to gain faction. I wrote this as a response to a player who had some questions so I decided to make it a guide.
So you just dinged 200 or have been 200 and finaly decided to make the plunge to SL. To level past 200 you need to gain Shadowknowledge (SK). SK can be gained only by killing SL mobs so you go to Scheol and start to kill some. "WTF, only 3 SK for killing that mob???"
Your problem is you need to gain faction in your respective Alignment \ Side. Faction can be increased only by killing sided \ Aligned mobs. If you Type /open faction and you can see what your current faction rating is.
This is what you need to know when you look at that faction window. There is basicaly one faction per side\alignment that dictates the amount of SK you get per kill.
If your Omni - Try to max Unredeemed
If Your Clan - Try to max Redeemed
If Your Nuetral - Try to max Gaurdian
The others listed compliment these main ones respectivley but the ones listed above are the important ones.
As your faction goes up by killing the opposite Sides\ Alignments mobs you need to find mobs that have a higher opposing faction rating than you. After killing the same level mob over and over at one point you will no longer gain anymore faction from that mob.
But let’s cut to the chase, normal sided mobs won’t give you much faction. You need to seek out the head honchos of the opposing faction. Basically each zone has their leader for each side. For example Adonis has Gilthar for the redeemed and Daljia for the Unredeemed. Killing the "leaders" of the zone will give you more faction in one kill than all of their lackeys in the zone so it almost a waste of time to go fumbling about killing the minions.
Eventually even the leader of that zone that you have been killing over and over will no longer give you any faction so you must move on to the next zone to gain faction.
But where are these "Leaders"? In their temples of course, but they are not standing around waiting for you to pop a cap in them. These "leaders" must be spawned and the process varies from zone to zone. In Adonis it's simple; you go to the respective opposing temple and kill a placeholder mob that will then spawn an "ardent" NPC. He will ask for 6 Insignias of "Leader name here" and then the leader will spawn. Kill him\her rinse and repeat until you no longer get faction then move on to the next zone (most of these leaders have phat lewt too).
In penumbra the spawning process is a little more difficult and requires more of a quest type process. Also, you may be able to solo the leader in Adonis and below based on your profession, but beyond Adonis consider it a regular raid since these leaders are tuff cookies.
So what do you next? Well it depends, if you’re below 200 don't even worry about gaining faction unless it's for meeting a requirent to equip a weapon, nano, ring, etc. If you are 200, then make it a priority to get to Penumbra (or Inferno if you can get the boots and ring) and faction there. Each zone has a cap of how much faction is attainable. For Penumbra its 23-25 K I believe and you can get up to 50K in Inferno.
So is it worth factioning in Adonis or below? Well no unless you want a particular item that these mobs drop. Some even say Pen is a waste of time and to try to get to Inferno ASAP but if you don't belong to a big guild it may be tuff. Penumbra is probably the best place to start then.
Also, you can see who is "Faction Raiding" by joining #dungeonresetters on irc.funcom.com using a chat application called mIRC. The reason people use this is when chain spawning (and killing) the leader in the temple you can speed up the respwning process by getting out (or logging out) of the temple and waiting 18 minutes. The placeholder mob will then respawn if the temple is empty within the 18 minutes opposed to 45 or 90 minutes. This does not apply in Inferno where the Temple can not be reset and you must wait a full 90 minutes between "Faction Raids".
One last note, none of this applies to Neutrals. Neutrals gain faction by primarily killing hecklers. Every zone has hecklers and the higher up the zone the higher the faction cap. So for nuets, when they max their Guardian faction in Adonis (25K) by killing hecklers they move onto Penumbra and start killing higher levels ones so on and so forth. Neutrals have a much easier time gaining faction than us sided folks. They deserve it I guess since 1-200 they have a harder time gaining xp.
I hope this helps, anyone who has additional info or corrections please post
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Inferno is a *nasty* place. It was suggested to me (and I will pass the suggestion along) that once you get to the temple, you stay there until your faction is at least 40k. I think its really a good idea seeing what a pain it is getting to the temples. 
