Moria: Older and Fouler Things than Orcs

Chester scores a critical hit against something. A worm waits nearby, and there is a wand on the floor.

Moria's basic problem is one of exhausting length. You have to explore twice the number of levels as Rogue and each level is five times as large. If you had an invincible character and did nothing but rush from each level to the next, it would still take a good 3 or 4 hours to reach Level 50. With the necessary amount of exploration, grinding, and occasional visits to the surface to restock and refresh, all required to survive at the lower levels, you're looking at 30-40 hours, easy, for a successful game. Over such a long period, it's very difficult not to make any blunders. There can't be many people who have legitimately won Moria.

As I write this, my character is on level 17, and I fear I'm already save-scumming, as Chester was killed for the first time back on Level 13 by a human zombie. The bastard attacked me right after I emerged battered but victorious from a battle with an orc shaman. Since then, I've had to reload two more times, mostly because I'm pressing downward faster than I normally would.

My last screen playing the game legitimately.

       
As I noted last time, the large levels, which take up about half a dozen screens each, are regenerated and randomized every time you visit, including the placement of up- and down- staircases. You can't immediately return to a previous level, as the staircase vanishes behind you every time you transition. Sometimes it seems that you've explored the whole level without finding a staircase, but inevitably a secret door opens into another entire wing of corridors and rooms.

The randomization has some positive aspects. For one, you don't have to worry about finding every secret door and exploring every room. If you think you'd like to spend more time on a level to grind and find treasure, the easiest thing to do is go back up one level then find another down staircase. Boom--everything is refreshed and restocked. It also means that the staircases are viable ways to escape, permanently, from enemies you don't want to fight. And while the respawning and randomization means that returning to the surface without a "Recall" spell is a nightmare, I still like it better than Rogue, where you could only move downward after exploring each small level. NetHack, which offers compact and permanent levels (while still allowing backtracking) is, I must say, better than both.

The game includes the need for both light and food, but they're such trivial challenges that I wonder why the developers bothered. In 17 levels, including a lot of backtracking and holding down the "s" key while I wait for hit points to regenerate, I think I've eaten maybe 4 meals. Even if I'd had to eat 6 times that number, they're so cheap up on the surface that it doesn't really matter. Similarly, torches last for 4,000 turns by default and cost almost nothing. I've yet to run through my original stock of 10.

Every level has a ton of secret doors. As with other roguelikes, you have to be standing next to them to find them when hitting (s)earch, and as with other roguelikes, each individual "s" has a very small chance of success. More than once, in the early stages, I got trapped on levels where I could find no stairways. I knew there were secret doors somewhere, but all the searching in the world wouldn't reveal them. This is one reason I consider a spellcaster with "Find Hidden Traps/Doors" essential.

Moria uses 46 letters (23 lowercase and 23 capitals) plus two symbols to represent its creatures. Except for some common D&D derivations (kobolds, orcs, dragons), the list is mostly not derived from Rogue, though it is derivative of CRPGs in general. We have giant animals (giant ticks, giant ant, giant bat), undead (zombies, vampires, wights), classic monsters (ogres, harpies, golems, elementals), and a few inexplicable ones (quylthulgs, yeeks, icky-things). Although only 48 characters are used, there are more than 48 total monsters, as many of them are differentiated by color (white seems to be the weakest) and sometimes type; for instance, zombies and skeletons come in elf, orc, human, and other varieties.

A "Grape Jelly" drains my mana from afar.

The usual effects are here. Worms, giant centipedes, and snakes poison the character, though thankfully poison wears off quickly and only saps hit points, not strength. Some creatures (e.g., giant cobras) cause blindness, others fear, others confusion. A few unmitigated bastards drain experience levels. There are a handful, like "worm masses" and giant gnats that are self-spawning; they can easily make more and more of themselves faster than you can kill them, allowing them to overwhelm the player.

A "Detect Monster" spell reveals the extent of a giant gnat infestation. I think I'll go the other way around.

One huge difference between Moria and other roguelikes has to do with the speed variance between the character and various monsters. Innate dexterity, strength, weight, weapon weight, and various special items determine your speed, and each monster type has a speed hard-coded. On early levels, most monsters are a lot slower than the character, allowing players to make quick getaways if hit points get too low. But starting around Level 10, the player starts to encounter monsters who have multiple moves and attacks against even relatively fast characters. This makes it very hard to run away. I understand that boots or rings of speed are particularly prized by this game's players, but I've yet to find either.

As with any roguelike, inventory is a huge part of the game. Your maximum inventory is limited by strength and weight, but even the strongest characters can only carry 22 separate items. This doesn't include equipped and worn items, which appear on a separate list. One innovation that I like is the ability to designate a primary weapon and secondary weapon, with the "x" key instantly reversing them. This makes it simple to switch between melee and ranged weapons, or between a weapon and a pick for bashing into walls.

Switching to a pick to clear out this rubble.

There are weapons, armor, amulets, food, potions, rings, scrolls, staves, and wands, and the usual roguelike conventions apply. At the beginning of each game, each effect is randomized by color for potions, by incantation for scrolls, and by types of metal for wands. Only through experimentation or a Scroll of Identification can you start to learn that a "red potion" is a Potion of Blindness and a "tin wand" is a Wand of Fire Balls. Many items are cursed and can only be removed with a Scroll of Remove Curses or a comparable spell. Unique to this game are colored mushrooms, which have similar effects as potions.

Items aren't scattered randomly like in Rogue. In Rogue, you had as much chance of finding a Scroll of Genocide on Level 1 as Level 20. In Moria, items seem to get better as you move downward. Rings didn't start showing up for me until about Level 8, and amulets not until about Level 15. Even within a category, items seem to get better as you go down.

Perhaps the most useful item in the game is a Scroll of Word-of-Recall. If you're in the dungeon, it takes you back to the town. If you're in town, it returns you to the maximum dungeon level that you've ever explored. They're sold in the town, so you generally don't want to use your last one until you have enough money to buy a new one.

The seasoned adventurer returns to town to spend some of his hard-earned gold.

Word-of-Recall scrolls are really the only things that make returning to the surface tolerable. I occasionally manually walk back down the levels after visiting the surface--it's good for grinding and wealth-accumulation--but nothing's more frustrating than trying to fight back up 15 levels. I can't imagine trying to do it at Level 40. The scrolls don't work instantaneously, so you can't use them to escape death. Instead, you cast them and then wander around for about 20 moves before they teleport you.

Partly because of the scrolls, both the town and the economy remain extremely important throughout the game. The town sells most, if not all, of the game's magic items, so if you have no luck finding a Ring of Resist Fire in the dungeon, you can always try your luck at the magic shop. I think--but I'm not sure--that the inventory updates based on the lowest level you've managed to achieve in the dungeon. I've been noticing more advanced items in the shops as the game goes on. In any event, magic items, scrolls, and potions are expensive, and you don't get that much money during exploration. You always have an incentive to tunnel into the walls for every last gold piece, to sell unwanted items, to increase charisma, and to bargain with the shopkeepers.

Some of the cool stuff available for the right price.

Finally, let's talk about spells. I like the system. Both mages and priests have a selection of spellbooks, each with 5-7 spells. Spellcasting characters come with the first level spellbook in their field, and you have to buy (or find?) more to get the higher-level spells. With every level you increase, you can select one new spell to learn out of any of your spellbooks, as long as the spell level is equal to, or less than, your character level.

After you've learned a spell, it costs mana to cast. Mana is precious. For my ranger, at least, it's only enough to cast a couple of spells before he has to regenerate, so not enough to make a successful combat spellcaster. Mages could probably do better. There's a chance of failure, based on your intelligence and level, every time you cast. Mana regenerates significantly slower than hit points.

I use a rare offensive spell against a Grey Ooze. Generally, missile weapons are the better option.

I find certain spells absolutely essential for effective exploration. I've already talked about "Find Hidden Traps/Doors," a Level 5 spell, without which I would have been stuck many times in areas in which I couldn't find the exit. "Detect Monsters" is also extremely valuable to get a quick sense of the area around you. I cast "Light Area" (a Level 5 spell) every time I enter a darkened room.

I just recently got "Teleport Self," which serves as a nice "Hail Mary" in a tough combat. I'm looking particularly forward to reaching Level 23, at which point I can learn the "Identify" spell and I can stop relying on scrolls. Other useful ones in between include "Recharge Item," "Create Food," and "Remove Curse." I frankly don't know how a pure warrior class gets through this game.

I just bought this spellbook. I look forward to learning some of these.

Permadeath might be necessary to truly beat the challenge of Moria or any roguelike, but it's not necessary to the player's enjoyment of the game. I think Moria without permadeath (and perhaps a smaller dungeon) would be at least as fun as anything that came out in 1983. Through its extensive item and monster lists, it captures the spirit of tabletop role-playing games better than most other CRPGs. By saving once every two level transitions, I still preserve the sense of really not wanting to die, but without the utter despair that comes with losing a Level 20 character on Level 30 of the dungeon. Except for the absolute landmark games in the genre, I fear you're not going to see me play more roguelikes like this.

As for Moria, even with save-scumming, I don't expect to win very soon, so we'll probably move on to Quest for the Unicorn. I'll keep playing Moria in the background and we'll see how long it takes.