The Lord Of The Rings Return To Moria – A Guide for Novice Adventurers
Making Your Way Through Moria A Beginner's Guide to The Lord of the Rings
Quick Links
- Negative Status Effects And What They Do
- Build Strong And Last Long
- Build Itty-Bitty Bases
- Don’t Neglect Building Storage Facilities
- Early-Game Upgrade Hierarchy
- How To Unlock Recipes
- Let There Be Light
- Roll With The Punches
- Shields Are A Priority
If there is one thing that Return To Moria will establish early on, it is that this is not a game that is interested in holding your hand. If anything, Return To Moria is more interested in dragging you through the mud face-down.
The name of the game here is survival. You’ll need to upgrade your base, craft more formidable equipment, and explore the deep, dark tunnels of Moria if you want to survive. Death will not be a stranger to you as you do so. Thankfully, with this guide by your side, you’ll do more than just survive; you’ll thrive!
Negative Status Effects And What They Do
One of the very first things you will encounter is how hunger, weariness, and the darkness will affect your merry dwarf.
The meter below your health bar will track your hunger. If you allow this bar to sit empty, you will acquire the starving status. While you are starving you will gradually take damage. While cooking your food is always preferable, in an emergency chow down on raw food. At the very least, it will stave off hunger. If you go too long without sleeping, you will grow weary. When this happens, your stamina will be less efficient, making survival harder.
Lastly, you will need to contend with the cold and the darkness. If you spend too much time in the darkness you will experience Despair and start to rapidly take damage. Meanwhile, if you spend too much time away from a source of heat, you will become Bone Cold. Naturally, both of these ailments are cured by keeping the area you are in well-lit with torches.
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Build Strong And Last Long
One of the things you will notice about setting up a base is that few locations are truly ideal. Throughout your journey through Moria, you will find that plenty of locations come pre-equipped with certain amenities, and while that is super handy you will want to really look at the base critically. A lot of the time everything, including the walls themselves is crumbling. Don’t neglect that stuff.
You have the ability to build walls, create entryways, and generally make things sturdy and resilient. It is worth your time and resources to do just that. Stone is easily the most plentiful material in the game, and a stone wall only costs nine stones to build. If you do this, when your enemies inevitably attempt to raid your base, you will be far more capable of repelling them.
Build Itty-Bitty Bases
Never progress too far without constructing a little base! You obviously don’t want to go through the trouble of fully kitting out dozens of massive bases while you explore, but not all bases need to be fully featured. A Camp Hearth costs 10 Wood Scraps, 6 Stones, and 6 pieces of Coal. Additionally, a Bedroll only costs 6 Cloth Scraps. Add a Meal Table for an additional 10 Wooden Scraps and do you know what you have? A cheap base camp to heal, save, and refill your hunger bar!
Stones and Wood Scraps are strewn about everywhere in Moria. You will have a constant supply, so there is no excuse to not build these little bases. Remember, if you die you will be sent to the last place where you rested.
Don’t Neglect Building Storage Facilities
You are going to be acquiring a lot of material during your journey. Truth be told, you aren’t going to have room for all of it. Things will get worse before they get better, too, as you are going to encounter more and more materials. That is why at your main bases you will want to build material pallets and chests. Worry not, the items you place in storage can be used while you build without them being in your inventory.
You will be able to acquire plenty of building material as you venture out into the wild, so leave all your Wood Scraps, Stone, and Cloth Strips behind when you leave your base. Similarly, you will acquire plenty of food as you explore, so leave your ingredients behind as well. Eventually, you can expand your storage, but until then, you will want to be thoughtful about how much you take with you.
Early-Game Upgrade Hierarchy
In the early stretches of the game, certain resources are incredibly precious. You aren’t going to have enough iron to just throw it around recklessly. And if you are repairing those statues, you will find that you will have more recipes for iron gear than iron to make it with. So, here is our recommendation for upgrading.
Your first three Iron Ingots will need to be spent on the Forge. After that is built, spend the single Ingot to forge Ori’s Key open un Ori’s Chest. That will get you another three ingots! Now, spend those ingots on the Iron Shield. After that, you will want to take a brief respite from forging equipment and build a Smithy. That way, when your shield starts taking a beating, you can repair it.
After that, you should forge the Iron Sword, and, finally, forge your Steel Hammer. With that hammer, you will be able to repair those statues and get more recipes. From here on out, just build the armor you unlock the recipes for.
How To Unlock Recipes
There are a few ways to craft in Return To Morta. For starters, you’ll be able to craft a number of items and structures without any additional facilities. This includes basic equipment as well as things such as torches and platforms. Being a dwarf, making stuff is sorta your thing. So, all you will need to do in order to acquire these recipes is to pick up new materials.
Additionally, you will be able to build a Forge. This is your ticket to substantially nicer gear. The way to obtain recipes for the Forge is to repair the damaged dwarf statues you will find scattered around Moria. Every statue you repair will reward you with a recipe (or in certain cases, a piece of a recipe). The requirements for repairing these statues will change when you enter into a new part of Moria.
Let There Be Light
Darkness is a constant threat while you explore the depths of Moria. The torch is going to be one of the first things you’ll be able to craft, as all the materials you need to do so will be available right where you spawn. However, while the torch certainly does the trick for the first half hour of the game or so, it has one substantial weakness: it occupies your off-hand.
With how useful the other off-hand equipment is, you are going to want to dump that torch as quickly as possible. Thankfully, you will gain the ability to place torches along the walls and place Standing Torches in the middle of your path. This will help stave off the darkness when you are caught wondering Moria at night. Place these torches down regularly as you progress.
Roll With The Punches
While you aren’t going to mistake Return To Moria with a Souls game any time, there are certainly elements that feel vaguely Soulsian. The dodge roll is easily the best example of this. While it may be a touch clumsy, your roll has a tremendous amount of invincibility.
In the early parts of the game, when you don’t have access to the shield, you will want to roll constantly. Even later in the game, once you have better defensive options, this roll will definitely play a role (heh) in defeating some of the tougher enemies.
Shields Are A Priority
The combat in Return To Moria is relatively simple, but what you will find is that you will frequently be facing off against multiple foes who are all capable of lunging directly at you. They have a tendency to surround you as well. Unquestionably, this is a problem. There is an answer for the teaming up behavior of your foes. Shields in Return To Moria are extremely powerful and will guard you from nearly every angle.
That’s right, if you are guarding, and an enemy attacks your back, you will block their attacks. The shield can be raised almost instantaneously as well. You can cancel an attack by whipping out your shield. Early in the game, the Iron Shield will be more than capable of nullifying all damage as well. Oh, and to top it all off, if you attack while guarding you will perform a shield bash, which will incapacitate many of the enemies you’ll be facing.
Now that you’re armed with these tips, go forth and conquer Return To Moria! Survive the treacherous depths, build your mighty base, and become the champion dwarf you were meant to be!
