Moria: Fly, You Fools (with Final Rating)

Braving traps and locked doors to get a piece of armor.

Moria

United States

Robert Alan Koeneke and Jimmey Wayne Todd Jr. (developers); open distribution 
Released 1983 on VMS systems; ported by various developers over the years to multiple platforms, including DOS, in 1988, by Don Kneller
Date Started: 23 December 2013

Date Ended: 18 February 2015

Total Hours: 74

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)*
Final Rating: 38
Ranking at Time of Posting: 77% (136/177)

Ranking at Game #458: 365/458 (80%)

*I originally rated the game as "very hard" (5/5), thinking only of my ability to find the balrog and end the game. I later reflected that in terms of general mechanics, improving the character, and staying alive, Moria is relatively easy (for a roguelike), so the new rating is a compromise between the two.

I'm giving up on Moria, version 4.873, as ported to DOS by Don Kneller of San Francisco in 1988, because I'm not convinced that it's winnable. Even if it is, it would have taken me longer than I was willing to invest, even with save-scumming.

After the last post, I slowly made my way down to Level 50, returning to the surface every 5 or so levels to spend my hard-earned gold, usually on Scrolls of Identification. (I eventually got the spell itself, but it failed so often, it was still worth the money to buy the scrolls.) During my explorations, the spell that did me the most good was "Teleport." Basically, every time I got into an untenable fight--particularly on the lower levels with dragons, liches, and vampires--I simply teleported myself away. If a level just seemed irredeemable because of too many of these foes, I used a staircase or a Scroll of Recall to get out of there permanently.

One thing I like about the game is that the dungeon level seems to adjust the maximum (or perhaps average) difficulty of the foes, not the minimum difficulty. Even on Levels 50-60, I'd still encounter creatures that I was capable of defeating, and thus continue to level up. I managed to make it to Level 30 legitimately.

Eventually, when I reached dungeon levels beyond 50, I settled into a pattern by which I would explore the level as much as possible. When I got to the point that I'd explored the whole thing, or as much as I could without rousing dragons, liches, and vampires, I'd go up or down at the nearest staircase and start a new one. Every so often, I'd use a Scroll of Recall to get to the surface, spend my money, figure out my items, and then use another Scroll to go back to a regenerated level.

Just after I used "Teleport" to escape a lich.

           
I was save-scumming quite liberally throughout this process, of course. I had to reload about once per level. I sometimes (shamefully) reloaded if a creature drained my experience too much, although I tried to keep potions to negate this. I never got to the point where I was able to defeat some enemies--primarily ancient dragons and liches--in a stand-up fight, despite being ranked "Superb" in fighting.

Towards the end of my playing, there were interesting dungeon constructs like this, but none of them ever held the treasure I was seeking.

           
Despite all my efforts, there were a number of things I expected to encounter on these lower levels and never did:

• The Balrog. Sites based on later versions suggest that there's a 50% chance that he'll be generated on any level below 50. In almost 30 visits to levels below 50, I never found him. Granted, I was unable to exhaustively explore the levels, but still--you'd think I'd have run into him once. Even though I was probably incapable of defeating him, I at least wanted to know that he was there. 

I cast "Locate Monsters" frequently and found everything but the capital "B" I was hoping for.

     

• Any item that conferred permanent speed or "haste." Every site says these items are vital, but I never found one, and I'm not convinced they exist in this version. When I finally hex-edited my character up to Level 33 so he could cast "Haste," there was no indication on-screen that he was faster, although I did notice that he seemed to get a few more attacks in combat. There's no mention of the word "speed" in the manual for this edition, if that provides any evidence one way or the other.

• Any item that conferred permanent "see invisibility." I had to rely on scrolls and staves for this, and sometimes they just didn't seem to work, especially against ninjas--good candidates for the most annoying RPG enemies ever--who show up, poke you, laugh, steal items from your backpack, and then take off with a "poof!"

• Artifact weapons. Moria sites talk about weapons called "Holy Avenger" and "Defender" and "Slay Dragon" and such, but I never found any of these.

On the other hand, this famous beast did eventually show up. I did not last long against him.

             
The slowness of leveling has also quenched my desire to keep playing. In about 38 hours spent on the character, I made it to Level 30. When I quit, he had 122,242 experience points and I was earning about 2,500 points for each foray to the lower levels, which took me maybe 30 minutes per visit. In order to get to Level 33 to test "haste," I had to hex-edit my character to 350,000 experience points, which would have taken me another 140 visits at 70 hours.

I'm pretty confident that a save-scumming player could win Rogue in less than 10 hours and NetHack in less than 20. But I found this version of Moria unwinnable, even with save-scumming and hex-editing in almost 40 hours. And before you ask, hex-editing to godlike levels wasn't an option because this version caps you at some level between 30 and 40 depending on class.

Some comments in a 1996 Usenet post by creator Robert Koeneke may shed some light on my difficulty:

[Between 1983 and 1985], I listened a lot to my players and kept making enhancements to the game to fix problems, to challenge them, and to keep them going.  If anyone managed to win, I immediately found out how, and "enhanced" the game to make it harder.  I once vowed it was "unbeatable," and a week later a friend of mine beat it!  His character, "Iggy," was placed into the game as "The Evil Iggy," and immortalized...And of course, I went in and plugged up the trick he used to win.

Koeneke's last official version was 4.7 or 4.8 at which point he provided the source code to the world. At least one history of Moria page indicates that the next released version, "based on Moria 4.8 sources" and developed at the University of Buffalo, had false Balrogs starting on Level 50, but the real Balrog not showing up until Level 1200! While I never encountered any Balrogs, real or false, is it possible that Balrog not showing up until Level 1200 is a carry-over from Koeneke's 4.8? Based on his comments, I wouldn't put it past him.

Most of my commenters, as well as various Internet sites, seem to be familiar with the various UMoria versions that were developed after 1990, plus Angband, an expansion of the game. It's tough to find sources specific to 4.8 or earlier. Even the manual that came with the DOS version of Moria 4.873 was written in 1994, well after these variants, and mentions features (being able to type a number followed by a command to indicate executing that command that many times; the need to manually (G)ain new spells; the use of a tilde to specify an action until something changes; the implementation of "monster memory") that don't actually exist in the 1988 DOS version.

It's possible that I just got extremely unlucky with the Balrog's generation and with my artifact finds, and that this version is entirely winnable, but until I see some confirmation or get any hints specific to this version, I'm going to move on and instead trust my luck against the Balrog in Angband, coming up on my 1990 list.

A few things I didn't otherwise mention in the previous posts:

• Encumbrance is fairly generous in this version. I never got a message that my load was too heavy. Instead, you're limited by the number of different types of items.

• I also like that you don't have to equip wands and staves before shooting with them.

• For most of the game, I kept a pick as my secondary weapon, so I could quickly swap it in with the "x" key when I wanted to tunnel into a wall. But I kept forgetting to swap it out again afterwards, and some hours later, I'd notice I was attacking a golem with a pick.

• Unlike in NetHack, if a thief steals your items in Moria, there doesn't seem to be any way to get them back.

• You get a small amount of experience for disarming traps. I can't remember a previous game that does this.

All right. Based on my experience so far, here's my GIMLET. I mention the year 1983 a lot of times below. I'm aware that this version is technically from 1988, and I don't know for sure what features were available in the original version, but I'm assuming that in all areas, the core elements, at least, were present in 1983.

• 1 point for game world. Roguelikes hardly ever do well in this category. There just isn't enough of a backstory or consistent theme.

• 5 points for character creation and development. This category is more advanced in Moria than any other game of the era. There's an extensive creation process (including the cute backgrounds), the choice of race and class really matters, and there's an original skill system. Leveling up is very rewarding and occurs at a reasonably good clip until about Level 20.

             

My final character sheet.

          

• 1 point for NPC interaction. The only NPCs are annoying beggars and rogues who accost you on the town level.

• 5 points for a nice mix of standard D&D derivatives and original inclusions for foes. Again, we have to remember that in 1983, there weren't many CRPGs that did a good job implementing all the strengths, weaknesses, special attacks, and defenses inherent in tabletop RPGs. Moria and Ultima III are standouts in the year.

• 6 points for magic and combat. Again, a category in which roguelikes exceed most other RPGs until the late 1980s. Only Wizardry and Ultima III come close in this era. You have melee and missile weapons, spells, magic items, and a variety of tactics to help you overcome foes, including highly-original features like spiking doors.

• 7 points for equipment. There isn't a single game, roguelike or otherwise, that had such a complex approach to equipment in 1983, and very few afterwards. NetHack does it better with the ability to use so many items in conjunction with each other, but Moria does it pretty damned well. A solid equipment system is really the backbone of any roguelike.

• 6 points for the economy. This is the first roguelike I've played to do the economy well. With so many useful things to buy back in town, I never felt that I had too much money. I just wish that some of the higher-order magic items had been available for obscene costs.

There's always cool stuff to buy. Here, I'm loading up on Potions of Cure Critical Wounds.

• 2 points for the quest. It has one; that's about all you can say.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface--all going, of course, to the interface. I like nothing better than a bunch of keyboard commands, easily referenced with the ? key, that make logical sense.

• 2 points for gameplay, the most disappointing category. Moria is punishing even by the standards of roguelikes, requiring far too much effort and time even for a successful character. It gets points for replayability, since different classes experience very different challenges, but in length and difficulty, I just found it exasperating.

The final score of 38 is extremely high for the era. It is the second-highest score I've awarded any game before 1985 (the highest was the 51 I gave Ultima III), and it shows, once again, that roguelikes generally outstrip other CRPGs in mechanical and logistical categories. (I'm still waiting for one with a great story, NPCs, and a solid quest system.) If only Robert Koeneke hadn't been so determined to defeat his players, this early version might have been truly outstanding by my standards. I look forward to seeing how it got adapted in Angband, which is coming up on my 1990 list.