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 (unfinished)

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

Ranking at Game #556: 81% (449/556)

*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 [ed. We later determined Angband was first released in 1993 and played it then].

    

****

    

Further Reading: Rogue (1980) was the game that inspired Moria. The Moria line continues with Larn (1986), BOSS: Beyond Moria (1990), Castle of the Winds (1992), Parts One and Two, and Angband (1993). Were you looking for the PLATO game? That's Moria (1975). 

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.

Game 173: Moria (1983)

Moria was first released in 1983; I'm playing a DOS version from 1988 that, as far as I can tell, maintains the basic structure, mechanics, and spirit of the original game.

      

Moria

United States

Independently developed and distributed
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

     

If we ignore graphics and sound, both of which should matter least to an RPG player, Moria is second only to Ultima III as the most advanced game of 1983. In considerations of equipment, economy, and monster variation, it not only surpasses Ultima III but any game released in 1984 and most games released in 1985. Again, we have to note that reliance on ASCII characters and only the most primitive sounds freed roguelike developers (in this case, University of Oklahoma students Robert Alan Koeneke and Jimmey Wayne Todd) to focus all their attention on logistics and mechanics. NetHack remains my highest-ranked game when it comes to the uses and variety of equipment, and only a few games rival it when it comes to the variety and special attacks and defenses of its monsters. I knew nothing about the roguelike sub-genre when I started this project, and my exposure to it has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my blog.

Moria is arguably the second roguelike game, after Rogue itself. Hack is often credited as a 1982 game, but as far as I can tell, it wasn't released until 1984, which of course matters most when considering a chronology. Wikipedia's chronology of roguelikes gives several others that supposedly precede Moria, but all of them are quasi-roguelikes retroactively labeled. They precede Rogue itself (Beneath Apple Manor, DUNGEON), show no awareness of Rogue (Sword of Fargoal, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Cloudy Mountain), or don't have the full complement of roguelike features.  To review, these are usually given as:

• Turn-based movement, ideally with no activity during the period between player actions
• Randomly-generated areas
• Abstract representation of graphics, usually with ASCII characters
• Permadeath: while you can save a game for later play, the death of a character results in the erasure of the saved file (or it's erased on every startup)

These four elements seem to be on everyone's list. Most of them also feature some kind of complex logistics associated with items, including an identification system, creative ways in which they interact, and a large variety of items to wear, wield, and use. 

The frequency and permanence of this screen separates roguelikes from normal RPGs.

Moria is certainly a good roguelike and a good CRPG for 1983, but it's somewhat unsatisfying playing it after NetHack. Unsatisfying and disconcerting, I should say, because the game looks like NetHack and yet operates under different rules. Some, but not all, of the commands, items, and monsters are the same. Having invested an absurd number of hours in NetHack last year, it was very difficult to re-learn the interface and conventions of a visually-similar but mechanically-different game. Ultimately, NetHack is a much better game, but of course it's also much later. In discussing the game, I'll try to make more comparisons to Rogue, its predecessor, than NetHack.

A typical Moria screen. On Level 1 of the dungeon and character Level 2, I fight a giant white centipede, who happens to be standing right next to a kobold. Another centipede awaits me in the room beyond, as well as a potion.

Moria's main quest is to descend into the mines of Moria and slay a balrog. (The two names are  lifted from the works of an obscure 20th century British author.) There's no other back story or context to the game world. The game begins above-ground, in a town with multiple shops and a handful of crude NPCs. From here, the player descends into 50+ levels of randomly-generated dungeons, slaying monsters, increasing levels, and finding better pieces of equipment on the way. Assuming the player makes it that far, the balrog is found somewhere around Level 50. Killing it immediately and victoriously ends the game.

Several characteristics of dungeon generation make Moria significantly different from Rogue and, ultimately, NetHack:

• The dungeon levels are very large, occupying multiple screens.

• Although you can move both up and down in the dungeon (and return to town), dungeon levels are randomly-generated every time you visit. There's no need to exhaustively explore a level, as you only have to go down and then back up to regenerate the level with new monsters and treasures.

• Because of the random generation, all staircases are one-way. Upon arriving on a new level, you must find new staircases both to go down and to return to upper levels.

• Monsters respawn extremely slowly on levels you've already cleared.

I found the game relatively easy in its early stages. It's quite hard to die in the first five or so levels, except through carelessness or really bad luck. Because enemies hardly ever re-spawn, you usually have very large, cleared "safe" areas in which to dither around and regenerate hit points. Enemies are relatively weak, and conditions like "poison" are only temporary and do not affect attributes, only hit points. Finally, because you can get a brand new level just by leaving and returning, you don't feel the same obligation to explore every corner that you do with Rogue.

White worm masses replicate and swarm, leading to a rare early-level death if you're so stupid that you take them on.

In the later stages, on the other hand, Moria can be a real bastard. Harder monsters may get multiple movements to your one (more on speed variances in the next post), making it hard to kill them and impossible to flee them. Perhaps most important, the sheer number and size of the levels increase the cumulative probability of death. NetHack took a long time to win because of the difficulty, but my actual winning game took less than 8 hours of actual gameplay. In Moria, I've played twice that long only to die on Level 20. You don't so much "win" Moria as outlast it.

As with other roguelikes, inventories can get out of control very fast.

I'm going to cover each of the major sections of the game in detail (most in the next post), but before I do, let me simply mention some of the main differences from NetHack for those of you stuck (as I was) in a NetHack mindset before playing:

• There are no intrinsics (save the "abilities" that we'll talk about) and no eating of corpses.

• Enemies don't drop any equipment and only rarely drop treasure. Valuable items are found randomly in the dungeon, not on slain foes.

• While items can be "cursed," the effect is simply to make the item non-removable. It is not a worse item, intrinsically, than a non-cursed version. There are no blessings.

• Items cannot be used in conjunction with each other.

• There are no special encounters like thrones, sinks, and fountains.

• There are no alignments or religious system.

On the other hand, Moria does have a number of its own innovations, including a town level and more complex shops. It had a full array of attributes, races, classes, and abilities before NetHack did. In keeping with its Tolkien source, you can "mine" valuables directly from some walls. There's a useful distinction between "equipped" items and "inventory" items and a bigger selection of magic items and effects. Combat mechanics are a bit more complex, and there are more ways to extract yourself from encounters (like spiking doors). While I still think NetHack is superior, I would easily put Moria ahead of Rogue for enjoyment.

Although every dungeon level spreads across multiple screens, you can bring up a small-scale map to help you navigate.

It's taken me so long to post about Moria because I really wanted to win the game and tie everything together in a single posting. At this point, having invested a few dozen hours in the game since December 2013, I have to say that you're not likely to see a "won" posting without an asterisk. While I'm convinced that the game is beatable with time and patience, I simply don't have the stamina to go through another NetHack experience. As I write now, the lowest level I've reached is 24. As I finally start this series of (probably three) postings on the game, I'll do my best to play honestly, but I'm also going to allow myself to copy the saved game every 2 or 3 levels. We'll see how far I get before having to resort to restoring one, and how much save-scumming I have to do after that to reach the final screen.

In creating your character for Moria, you choose your sex and race from a list of eight options: human, half-elf, elf, halfling, gnome, dwarf, half-orc, and half-troll. (The origin of the latter is perhaps best not imagined.) They have the normal D&D-inspired strengths, weaknesses, and class restrictions; for instance, halflings are good at thievery, only humans and half-elves can be paladins, and half-orcs and half-trolls are dumb but strong and best suited as warriors.

The game then rolls for age, height, weight, social class, and the game's six attributes (the standard D&D set of strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma). You get a cute little "background" paragraph for your character, which varies depending on your race and sex selections but is also heavily randomized. For instance, one random roll for a half-elf might give you:

Your father was a Green-Elf. You are one of several children of a yeoman. You are a credit to the family. You have dark brown eyes, wavy blond hair, and an average complexion.

Another roll for the same character might produce:

Your father was a Grey-Elf. You are the illegitimate but acknowledged child of a serf. You are the black sheep of the family. You have blue-gray eyes, straight black hair, and a very dark complexion.

It's just simple sentence substitution, but it's still a little fun.

A character background for a dwarf male.

The attribute rolls are fairly generous, and it's not hard to get everything in the double digits with a few SPACE bar entries. It's best to focus on the attributes. Weight matters a little, for carrying capacity and bashing, but I don't think the other statistics (age, height, social class) have a significant effect. The background doesn't really matter at all except for role-playing reasons.

After accepting the attributes, the player selects a class from those available to the race. Only humans and half-elves can choose from every class: warrior, mage, priest, rogue, ranger, and paladin. Finally, depending on all of these factors, you get a ranking from "very bad" to "superb" in eight skills: fighting, bows and throwing weapons, saving throws, stealth, disarming, use of magic devices, perception, and searching. These are immutable throughout the game and basically tell you how to best play the character. [Later edit: This last sentence was an artifact of an earlier draft and is incorrect. The skills are not "immutable"; they change with levels, attributes, and items.]

I've had a lot better experience playing a spellcaster in Moria than in the early versions of NetHack. Spells are much more useful here, particularly since they don't fade away from your spellbook. I'll cover the system in detail next time, but suffice to say that I consider "Detect Monsters" and "Find Hidden Traps/Doors" to be particularly vital, and I wouldn't want to rely on scrolls for these.

I haven't had a lot of luck relying on magic for combat, however, so strong martial skills are still important. After experimenting with a variety of characters, I've settled on a half-elf ranger as my best option. With the right stats, he starts at least "good" in every ability, which can showcase almost everything the game has to offer.

The final character sheet.

The game starts in a town level of six buildings: two magic shops (one for priests, one for mages), a weapon shop, an armor shop, a potion shop, and a store that sells exploration sundries like rations, torches, and iron spikes. (I can't remember this staple of tabletop RPGs showing up in any other computer RPG.) Item selections are partially randomized and remain quite relevant even at advanced levels. Particularly useful are potions and scrolls that increase your attributes or improve your weapons and armor. The problem is that the further you explore the dungeon, the further you get away from the town, and the longer it takes to backtrack and trade. This makes "Word-of-Recall" scrolls, which automatically whisk you between the town and the lowest explored level, a necessity.

The player starts out with a reasonably good default selection of items and an amount of gold influenced by starting attributes—the game actually compensates for lower scores by giving the player more starting gold. I generally found it was best to save the shops until I'd explored a few levels. There's a bargaining system, but gold is plentiful enough that I haven't bothered much with it. [Later edit: This last sentence is also the artifact of an earlier draft, and it's laughably wrong. The economy actually plays a major role in the game; gold is not that plentiful at higher levels, and every gold piece you can save makes all the difference. I apologize for the error.]

Bartering for iron spikes in the shop.

The town is also full of the most annoying NPCs that ever existed, including drunks, street urchins, beggars, blubbering idiots, rogues, and lepers. They swarm you, begging for money (rogues even steal it), stumbling into you, and you have to keep acknowledging their messages. There's no "talk" option in the game that makes them useful. I soon found that while there's no reward for killing them, there really isn't any penalty either.

If "more beggars than a Eurostar stop" isn't already a phrase, consider it coined.

After exploring the town, it's time to hit the dungeon, where—just as in any roguelike—you have to master a long list of keyboard commands (many varying whether you use uppercase or lowercase or a CTRL modifier), fight monsters, collect treasure, and slowly grow more powerful.

As with any good roguelike, there's an exhaustive in-game list of keyboard commands. If anyone's playing along with me, here's a tip you won't find in the manual: the DOS version recognizes only the right CTRL key, not the left.

This seems like a good place to break off. In the next post, I'll talk about the game's mechanics, including monsters, inventory, combat, and magic, and then probably spend a third post on the endgame if I can reach it.

   

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Further Reading: Rogue (1980) was the game that inspired Moria. The Moria line continues with Larn (1986), BOSS: Beyond Moria (1990), Castle of the Winds (1992), Parts One and Two, and Angband (1993). Were you looking for the PLATO game? That's Moria (1975).