Mines of Moria - exclusive PREVIEW!

That's right - Mrs Krispy and my good self have been down in London with Codemasters Online & Turbine (Jeffery Steefel taking QA no less), taking a look at, and actually PLAYING, the Mines of Moria expansion. As well as the write-up below, please also see the images in our gallery (just click here). We've just over 50 screenshots and photo's, including ALL the in game maps (well pretty much all of em).

I'll hand over to Nikki aka Mrs Krispy, who pretty much took all the notes, and played the game while I watched over her shoulder ;)

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During the special preview event, there was a bit of a presentation from Jeffery Steefel with what's new in Moria (quite a bit can be found elsewhere, but he also ended some incorrect speculation). Two new classes, new crafting tiers, new instances (1 12 man raid vs 'The Watcher' and 10 3-6 man instances), and the legendary item system.

Then using the wizardry of having total game control we were given a tour of Moria, it is big and it is very impressive, there's even dwarf gardens and animals wondering around (how did you think they were going to eat?).

Before the mines there's the Eregion area to be explored, and everyone gets this regardless of whether they get the expansion pack. There wasn't so much talk about this - it's the mines that everyone knows about - but I think there'll be a lot to do here before those with the expansion go underground.

We had a little stroll around during the playtime we had, and we saw a new copper node type (Khazad-Dum copper?) and a dwarf craft urn for scholars. Lots of wargs, wolves and other stuff including a wild goat (I got a splintered warg talon and the description now says that it's a champion and minstrel class item, yay no more confusion and 'who uses these' sort of posts).

Mines, big and wonderful. Lots of new types of mobs, different types of orcs and gobbos, gobbos mounted on wargs (see screenshots ), creatures from the deep which are creepy eyeless things, mini dragon things and of course worms. You can't use the mounts (pony's or horses) you have now in the mines (if Sam can't take Bill then it's only fair) the good news is that the new mounts (goats) can be used outside of Moria!

Then after the mines you have the trip to Lorien, we didn't really cover that much but we visited and got some screenies of Galadriel in her garden.


New Classes: Rune-keepers and Wardens

Two new classes, obviously we were given level 60 characters to play around with so I'm not going to make much of a decision on them seeing as I didn't really know how to play them and it took ages for me to notice that the rune my rune-keeper had was the one he started out with at level 1.

Rune-keeper
Well talk about the Rune-keeper first as we've heard lots about them already, pretty much if you use damage dealing attacks then you get more damage attacks to use during the fight and you only have the weaker healing options. A visual bar shows you which way you are tending (red=dps, green = healing), and if you only use healing during a fight you get big heals but you only have the weaker attack options. I got the attack level to full pretty quickly during a fight and you have some really nice big attacks to play with - obviously I'm just pressing random buttons, I want to play I have no time to read things, and I had something like 4 bars of various attacks, heals, other things that do a snow effect. Building the character up from scratch I think it's going to be a fun character to play - if a group needs healing backup they can help, if the group has healing covered they can just attack things (with lightening, oh yes no longer is that screen blinder a lore-master only skill). Light armour only so a bit squishy but the characters we were given didn't really have all the extras that we'd add like the rings, bracelets, etc. and mine didn't have any virtues so that will all make a difference.

Forgot to mention - it is really quick to cooldown from full melee to neutral, on the plus side it means that you don't have long to wait (seconds really) if you want to become more of a healer so it's really easy to change from fight to fight. On the negative side it means that if you think you're tough enough to keep going all out attack you'll have to keep building it up again walking from one fight to another

Wardens

Now I haven't really heard so much about the wardens so I was interested to find out more, in the presentation we were told about the gambit system where you do moves abc in different orders and then perform the gambit attack. What I noticed when I was playing is that this is going to be quite easy to get used too, difficult bit will be remembering all the different combinations (this is a lot like the fellowship conjunctions that we already have). Then what I noticed is that although wardens have medium armour and a shield there seemed to be quite a few ranged attacks with the javelin, and I noticed these 'muster' skills that allow you to swift travel to various locations (not sure if you can take a group but I'd be surprised if you can't), my conclusion is that the warden is a bit of a hunter at heart (which could be why a dwarf can't be a warden) but with the added ability to do more damage close in - of course because it was a template I might not have had all the skills to hand. The warden didn't have all the ranged ability of a hunter, but a lot more than a regular melee class; I think it will be a fun and interesting addition to the game and obviously I shall be rolling both classes.

NEW: Just another point of note, was the way Jeffery S. said that the Warden is animated differently to other classes - due to the way they fight - ranged fighting is through a 'throwing' action - Javalins thrown at mobs.  Also they crouch down behind their shield a little when fighting.  This means you can tell the class apart from a distance, just from watching the fighting style.

Legendary Items

Other than then new miles and miles of terrain to explore the really big thing about the expansion is the legendary item system. It's a bit like having a weapon with it's own history (you can have six items you're working on at a time but weapons were used in the example). There are now Forge Masters and Relic Masters who can tell you what your legendary item does and also recycle old or unwanted legendary items.

I don't think it will really take too long to get your head around it all especially when you have all the interface in front of you. Anyhow you have your base legendary item with it's base skills (could be make you tougher, recover morale quicker, etc.) which earns experience doing quests, killing things and by using special coin things that you get as drops. When it goes up a level you get points for the item to dish out on the skills it has making those skills better. Then you have relics; relics come from legendary items that you don't want - instead of vendoring these you have them broken down so that you can have the relics. The relics seem to be the skills from that item that you can then add to your own item - I think there were slots for 3 or 4 relics? In that way you can add new skills to your existing item. And you can reforge your item to rename it to give it that really personal touch.  During the Q&A, I saw legendary spear having a DPS of around 44 (it was only a tier 1 weapon, without being filled with relics), so I would expect weapons with a DPS of 50-60+ (speculation from what we saw).

Now some armour sets that we have now may well become legendary items and even if you don't want to use them they can always be broken down to get the relics from them - the rift armour set was mentioned. *

Once broken down the relics from an item go into a 'special place' until you use them i.e. they don't take up bag space

UPDATE:
Most (all?) of the base legendary items are drops rather than made - they are from earlier times in Middle Earth.  BUT:  all is not lost of those who want to make stuff.  (like me!)

You can now specialise in some areas of your crafting - not exactly sure but things like 'specialise in double handed swords' etc.  Nothing certain on limits of specialisation...

But once you are VERY VERY good at stuff, I believe you can make items to help buff legendary items - helping make them even better. So I would guess they would sell for a LOT on auction houses.. requiring GM + specialisation etc.

Additional info that came out during my many questions (OK some other people asked a few);

• The upcoming BOOK 15 (they are already onto this) and future books will/may expand both Moria and other areas of Middle Earth - Turbine see Moria as 'another' part of Middle Earth they can now expand and grow.
• BIG ONE:  There is a 'session play' part where you play a dwarf who goes along with DURIN and the party who first find the Balrog and free him  (Durins bane obviously)...  It's pretty immense! 
  
• Legendary items will not be with you from the start (I asked if any of our current items/armour/weapons could be 'discovered' to be legendary on installing the Moria expansion) *
  
• The performance of the game on your pc should not get worse - in fact due to optimisations it may (that's MAY) get a little better. The huge open rooms in Moria should not push your PC any harder.
• Everything is designed around it being a working city, so you have the waterworks area for powering the wheels and winches. 
  
• There's different ways the dwarves have lit the realm so you have light gathering mirrors that send beams of light down corridors and big gemstones and crystals that glow. 
  
• The dwarves who have now returned have put in scaffolding where they're repairing the damage caused by the orcs and there's also a lot of dark areas to be explored.
• To clear up - while 'The Watcher' (huge tenticled monster) is the 12 man raid - it also guards the mines when you first arrive - but they are NOT the same thing - you meet the watcher at least twice, and the 12 man raid is later, within Moria itself.
  

*  There is some confusion between myself and Mrs Krispy over 'existing armour sets' and legendary status ...  It maybe that existing 'special' armour sets (such as the rift armour) can broken down for their relics - which can then be added to legendary items... We pretty much think tho that they are NOT legendary themselves, so cannot be upgraded.  Sorry about the confusion - so don't scrap that armour yet!

... More to come as I remember it :)

BossDoc on September 23 2008 21:30:52 Any release date given???

Krispy on September 23 2008 21:58:17 No - they kept that to their chests. Beta starts 'next two weeks'...

BossDoc on September 23 2008 21:59:03 Beta has already started about 2 weeks already ( i have played also

Krispy on September 23 2008 22:02:23 As far as I know not in Europe it hasn't .. not officially.

BossDoc on September 23 2008 22:06:06 Same thing m8 u could play there and still be from europe i am from Eldar

Renkosi on September 25 2008 08:47:36 Reguarding the rift sets, as I understood it these can be broken down to give relics and legacies which can be applied to ther legdenary items that you find else where, they will not be ledgendry in them selves. However sady the big flamming sword that the balrog? drops in the rift will not be possible to break down... btw I have some notes from the day as well, I'll check back through them and try to carify what was said at somepoint

Krispy on September 25 2008 09:12:41 Brilliant - if you do that Renkosi - I can edit them into the main report if you like - or just put here as supplimentary

Renkosi on September 26 2008 13:09:07 OK, I think Jeffery was rather vague, but he said that raid sets could be broken down, but he referred to 'legendary' raid sets, so the question is do the current raid sets have legendary status?

Renkosi on September 26 2008 14:32:52 Infact, he seem to contract himself later on, it might be that only the raid sets collected AFTER moria comes out, are deconstructable.

Krispy on September 26 2008 14:58:29 that's why we were confused - my notes were from later on... so it's a possible still... We might know more during beta - although I won't have a rift armour set to use/deconstruct... doh! (not that I have one now either.. hehe)

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