Return to Moriais a survival crafting game set in the Fourth Age of Middle Earth. Take on the role of a dwarf as you join the campaign to reclaim the Mines of Moria, restoring the ancient Kingdom of Khazad-dûm. The game blends resource gathering, base building, combat, and exploration as players venture deep into the iconic underground city, battling monsters, uncovering treasures, and restoring the lost glory of the dwarven realm.
While the game offers a variety of engaging mechanics as you explore Khazad-dûm, mods take the game to new heights, enhancing gameplay while improving the quality of life. Whether it’s faster progression, aesthetic upgrades, or entirely new mechanics, mods make each adventure feel uniquely their own.
10LessRestrictiveConstruction
Eliminate The Hearth Requirement For Building
Bringing your vision of Khazad-dûm to life comes with plenty of challenges: gathering materials, battling orcs, and managing limited resources. One of the more frustrating restrictions is the requirement to build map stones near a hearth, especially when the ruins are filled with broken pathways and debris, making construction unnecessarily tedious.
The LessRestrictiveConstruction mod offers a solution for players seeking a more relaxed, creative experience. By removing the hearth proximity requirement, this mod allows you to build freely without worrying about location constraints. Now, you can focus on transforming Khazad-dûm at your own pace, quickly clearing rubble and restoring the ancient dwarven halls to their former glory without the usual construction headaches.
9Fat Chests
Increase Your Chest Inventory
Imagine this: you’re deep in Moria, gathering treasure and resources, and you return to camp to stash your loot, only to discover all your chests are full! Now you’re stuck playing theclassic inventory management game- deciding what to toss, what to keep, and how many items you can combine through crafting.
If you’re playing multiplayer, every game client will need the Fat Chests mod installed to see items in the extra slots.
The Fat Chests mod, which increases your chest inventory capacity to eight-by-eight, is a game-changer for inventory management in Return to Moria. Whether you’re a meticulous hoarder or just want to keep everything for future crafting, this mod makes managing your loot far less of a headache.
8More Loot
Increase Your Loot Drops
Like all survival games, resource farming is essential in Return to Moria. You need raw materials to craft tools, build structures, upgrade gear, and more. However, limited resources can significantly slow your progress.
This is exactly what happened to Vardigard, who realized they needed a large amount of wood to bring their Khazad-dûm dreams to life. After digging into the game files, they created a mod that increases the yield of almost all loot. Most loot drops are multiplied by five, rare wood yields by ten, and valuable items like black diamonds and Gundabad scrap by three. This mod makes resource gathering much more efficient, allowing you to create a spectacular kingdom.
7Mental Stability
Maintain Your Stability
For a game centered around rebuilding the Mines of Moria, it’s frustrating when your carefully crafted structures crumble quickly, especially as you work on grand, massive builds. A common complaint among players is the game’s instability; the game often does not realize you’ve overburdened your foundations until after you relaunch, only to find your hard work has crumbled, leaving you to start from scratch.
Enter the Mental Stability mod, which boosts your building stability by 20 times, ensuring your construction holds firm. With this mod, you can build massive structures without worrying about sudden collapses, allowing you to focus on your grand architectural visions without constant fear of them falling apart. As the mod creator says, it helps you “remain sane” while playing - so go ahead: unleash your inner dwarven architect!
6ConvertRecipes
Convert Common Materials Into High-Tier Materials
As you delve deeper into Moria, you’ll eventuallyneed more high-tier materialsto craft advanced tools, durable building supplies, and stronger weapons. However, these rare materials can be difficult to find, while basic resources like wood and stone are abundant and easy to farm.
You’ll need to find the crafted materials first before you can use the converted recipes.
The ConvertRecipes mod provides a clever workaround by allowing you to upgrade your common wood and stone into higher-grade materials. With this mod, you may transform those plentiful, low-tier resources into the rare items needed for more powerful crafting, streamlining the resource-gathering process and making it easier to progress through the game.
5Sprinting Mod
Must Go Faster
In Return to Moria, sprinting is tied to your stamina bar, making it essential to manage this resource carefully, particularly when you’re fleeing from dangerous enemies like drakes. Running out of stamina at a critical moment can mean the difference between life and death.
The Sprinting Mod changes this dynamic by giving you the option to either halve or entirely remove the stamina cost for sprinting. With this mod, you gain a considerable advantage when facing tough foes, allowing you to flee faster, reposition during combat, or save stamina for powerful, charged attacks. It makes navigating the treacherous depths of Moria a bit less punishing, letting you focus more on strategy and less on managing stamina.
4Fast Launch
For Expedited Gameplay
Return to Moria features stunning cinematic cutscenes, including a captivating openingwhere Gimli invites the dwarvesto the Doors of Durin. While this scene is beautifully crafted and adds to the game’s lore, repeated viewings can become tedious when you’re eager to jump into the action.
The Fast Launch mod comes to the rescue by allowing players to bypass these introductory cutscenes entirely. With this mod, you can skip the startup and intro videos, getting you into the game much faster and enhancing your overall experience. It’s a great option for those who want to dive straight into the adventure without waiting!
3Plantable Elbereth’s Blessing
Easily Farm For Elbereth’s Blessing
Elbereth’s Blessing is a rare plant used to make Lembas bread, the Elven bread that sustains the Fellowship during their journey in The Lord of the Rings. The plant grows in the Elven Quarters of The Western Halls, under a white Elven statue. Initially, you can harvest four plants, but after that, only one plant per day, and it cannot be grown in regular farm plots.
Increasing your Elbereth’s Blessing yield will decrease the game’s stakes as you’ll have ready access to Lembas bread, the best food ration in Return to Moria.
Fortunately, there’s a solution: the Plantable Elbereth’s Blessing mod. This mod allows you to grow the herb in your farm plots, increasing your daily yield. While you’ll need to gather a small stockpile from the Elven statue first, once you start farming, you can quickly boost your production.
2Debug Menu
Debug Your Game
While Return to Moria offers a great gameplay experience, its initial release was accompanied by a number of frustrating bugs. Thankfully, there’s a mod to help with that.
TheRareKiwi warns you not to send crash reports to the game developers while the Debug Menu is installed.
The Debug Menu mod not only addresses these issues but also grants players more control over their gameplay. With it, you can view map coordinates, adjust teleport locations, and fine-tune collision parameters. As the mod’s creator, TheRareKiwi, aptly described it: “Simple tools that some may find useful.”
1BD Game Pause
Pause Your Game To Take A Break
Return to Moria boasts a wealth of engaging game mechanics, but one notable oversight is the lack of a pause option. In single-player games, the ability to pause is typically an expected feature, allowing players to take breaks as needed.
There will be no “pause” text when your game is paused.
Fortunately, the Game Pause mod addresses this issue by granting players the ability to pause and unpause the game at will. This quality-of-life addition is a game changer, enabling you to take a moment to refill your snacks or step away for a quick break, no matter what’s happening in the game. It enhances the overall experience, allowing for more relaxed and enjoyable gameplay!
