Revisiting the Mines of Moria (First Half)

By: Lauren “Budgeford” Salk

Why Revisit Moria?

Moria is a beautiful, unique, amazing space. Don’t worry; we’re not changing any of that.

The purpose of this revamp was to address a number of player complaints about this area. First of all, a lot of people have mentioned how leveling in Moria is so tough for them that they try to get to level 53 (3 levels late) before venturing inside. After that, they only stay in moria for 3 levels before they skip out to hit the Dimrill Dale and Lothlórien at level 56 (4 levels earlier than intended for that content).

Secondly, the quest flow can be a bit cruel. Players get vectored into too many places at once and end up lost and frustrated when trying to do some of the simplest tasks in Moria (such as get to the Dolven-view for the thirtieth time.)

To boil it down, we learned through player feedback (and from our own in-game experiences) that leveling in Moria is just too challenging, despite the initial awe and the beauty of this space. This is something we’ve wanted to address for a long time on the Content team. Moria stands in the way of a new character reaching our end-game content, and we want the 1-75 experience to go smoothly for new people as the game gets bigger.

Overview: What Changed, What Didn’t

Three content designers (Ryan “Pinion” Penk, Jared “Sleepy” Saramago, and myself), one worldbuilder (awesome Matt “Scarecrow” Fahey), and a systems designer (Jon “Rock” Steady) had some open dev time between the Great River release and pre-production of Rohan. Time was allocated to giving Moria some much-needed love.

This pass was on the first half of Moria ONLY. The revamp includes the following:

• The Great Delving
• The Silvertine Lodes
• Durin’s Way & Zirakzigil
• The Waterworks
• Tasks (Now Moria has them!)
• Big quest arcs (Namely, the Riddles and Mirrors lines.)

The revamp DOES NOT touch the following:

• The Epic
• Zelem-melek
• The Redhorn Lodes
• The Flaming Deeps
• Nud-melek
• Moria Instances

Design Goals

The content design goals for Moria were very much in line with our design standards for the end game region of the Great River.

Here is a quick outline of what we targeted in our pass:

• Make sure each division actually offers enough quests from level to level.
  • When we looked under the hood, most zones came nowhere near this number. Some zones had as few as six quests available, but 30ish are needed to level from 50-60.
• Improve quest flow so that players have a clear, efficient purpose to their travel.
  • Prior to the changes, the quest tracker would frequently point players to every corner of a division at once, or worse.
  • Some quest arcs had players navigating to a tough-to-find monster camp, fighting through it, going back to the hub, navigating back to the same camp, fighting through it for a different reason, and so on. This is not awesome quest flow for a place as maze-like as Moria.
• Add quests to flesh out the quest count as needed to level.
  • Easy! There are now more quests in the first half of Moria.
• Make sure players can see, especially on main travel routes.
  • Scarecrow wanted to keep Moria dark, but not so much so that players would be blind. He spent a lot of time carefully adjusting the lighting in the affected zones.
• Make it easier to travel from hub to hub in Moria.
  • We don’t really want monsters attacking players when they’re trying to get from one quest hub to another on a major highway. The goats don’t like it either.
• Improve quest rewards.
  • Rock helped to make more sense out of the quest reward stat combos, and also added some consumables to the Durin’s Way rewards.
  • Oh, he also put the tame goat for sale in the Great Delving, no rep required.
• Reputation faction rewards are now banded by zone.
  • Revamped zones offer one rep faction reward or the other now, instead of rep being all over the place. For example, all Great Delving quests offer rep with the Guards, while the Silvertine Lodes area offers rep with the Miners. These will alternate for every zone by level.
• Add travel where it is needed.
  • Each zone got a little travel love in spots where it was most needed. New stable routes have been added, as well as other methods of teleportation which should cut down on unnecessary travel time.

The above points were implemented to push Moria into a more player-friendly state. It won’t look like any other part of the game, but questing will be less of an uphill battle with the improved quest numbers, flow, and navigability.

A Different Feel to Questing

Keep reading if you’re curious about the details of what we did and how they will likely impact you while you play!

We added a lot of small quest hubs to each division to mitigate a lot of the back-and-forth. You’ll find more small camps of eager dwarf explorers, lost miners, and other surprises along the road which should save a few trips to and from the major hubs. They’re often strategically positioned near important content such as monster camps, crossroads, and points of interest.

Quests have been added and moved to fill the map a bit better, making use of several landmarks that were just there as decoration before. As mentioned above, there were far fewer quests than needed to get people leveling smoothly through the region, so this was a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone. New quests will guide you to places like the Vault of Durin or to Shemeldurj, instead of you missing them entirely because you didn’t happen to stumble across them.

Linear flow is there for people who want it. If you like to pick up a quest in the first hub of a zone, and proceed to never run out of quests until you’ve completed the last one, in order, right at the end, this can now be done. The quests of each zone are much, much better organized now, and will pull you along in a fairly sensible fashion.

If you’re more of a reckless explorer type, that’s OK too. New quest hubs are open for business, even if you didn’t finish the one before. We won’t actively direct you there until the quests of the previous hub are finished, but no dwarf will turn you away if you wander up to take a gander at his quest ring.

Scarecrow put a number of lamps along the major travel routes connecting the quest hubs. If you stumble upon a lamp-lit road in your travels, following it will probably take you somewhere safe. The dwarves of the expedition are trying to make Moria great again, so I like to think that road safety is a big ticket on their to-do list.

The Fanged Pit in Durin’s Way can now be run solo so that players can complete the Morroval quest arc. It has been re-leveled to match the rest of the zone.

Tasks have been added to Moria at last, and the duplicate quests will give rep with either faction: the Iron Garrison Guards or the Iron Garrison Miners. There is a task board in every major quest hub, and a handy collection box nearby for turn-in (so that you won’t have to haul the goods all the way back to one hub). Also, tasks now have their own unique icon: A golden feather on the radar! No more quest ring!

Two quest arcs got some love, as well. The Moria-mirrors and the Riddles posed a challenge in having a clear, smooth quest flow, because they encompassed targets all over Moria in no particular order. These quest arcs are now largely about exploration, discovery, and a “collect-‘em-all” mechanic, instead of long, winding quest flow. We tried very hard to preserve the unique spirit of these quests while also making them much more player-friendly.

Lost or Confused?

You might find yourself lost if you were in the middle of questing in the four zones that were edited (Great Delving, Silvertine Lodes, Durin’s Way, and the Water-works.) Chances are high that the quests changed a great deal, which will remove them from your log if they were underway when the changes went into effect with the release of Update 7.

My advice would be to head to the first quest hub of whatever zone you were questing in. This way, you can catch the new quests and pick up some of the flow, if you want to backtrack. You could also start exploring and encounter some of the new hubs we’ve made. Content was not deleted, but a lot was added and changed. Hopefully this will not impact your experience too much!

Thanks for Reading!

Revisiting Moria was one of the most satisfying tasks I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on at Turbine, and I hope the results are satisfactory to you as well. There were a lot of really interesting pieces to play with when building out the content, thanks to all of the work that went into Moria when it went live in 2008.

Hopefully this dev diary will bear good news for my poor mother, who found Moria so confusing that she put aside her main and started rolling up alts. We don’t want any of our critical path content to turn people away!

We welcome your feedback so that we can continue to improve any new or old problem areas of Moria. I hope you enjoy the changes!