From: robear@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Jay Michael)
Newsgroups: rec.games.moria
Subject: Re: To die or not to die?
Date: 18 Dec 92 04:25:28 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

Hmmm, saving the save file for a backup is considered cheating?  I never
thought of it as anything but absolutely necessary . . . .

For one, maybe it's just me, but progress on Moria seems really slow, 
compared to the hours necessary to play it.  Slow advancement=frustration.

Another, maybe it's just me again, but the fact that Moria is really just
a massive wieghted random variable battle makes the slow advance even that
much more frustrating.  And this battle is heavily weighted against the 
player, bad things are much more likely to happen and are much worse than
the good things that could happen at the same levels.  Strategy was virtually
impossible, you were basically faced with hand to hand combat, especially 
at the higher levels (especially, also, as I was a half-troll fighter), when
all the creatures were moving twice your speed and teleporting about like
blink dogs.  Hand to hand is especially bad against life draining undead.
I presume Dexerity was the defense against that, but I never had one high
enough to make any difference.

Well, I would have just abandoned the game, except that I figured out how
to restore save files at will.  The game was fun again!  I was able to 
progress without having to worry about having my ratings knocked down and
wasting time fixing them.  Advancement rate was still the same-slow, but
now there was no "de-advancement".  Stragety was now possible, in how well
one utilized the save-restore method:

Power of Immunity to Life Drain:
Life Drain was always, always the ever present vulnerable point.  Not only
does it take you down, it makes fighting the undead a waste of time because
you don't even get experience for it.  I would restore every time I got 
touch drained, which, while a long process, especially against Emperor Liches,
was especially rewarding when the experience rolled in, especially against
Emperor Liches ;).

The Ability of Optimization:
This was always fun and useful when yearning for those rare and wondorous
magic items, that would never appear on a timely pace on their own.  The best
way was to fight a creature that normally carried a lot of treasure, in a 
big lighted room, and get it rather near death.  Save.  Restore and keep
killing it till you get what you want.  Normally, even this was a slow process
(those magic items really are _extremely_ rare), even when just trying for
_anything_ useful, like an identify scroll.  Seeing your opponent splatter
into valuables all across the room multiple times is also neat =).

Even with these and other tricks, Moria was a very difficult game.  It was 
fun not to cheat at times, but usually to get any experience or treasure that
was worth anything, I had to take risks far beyond my capacity to withstand
without the safeguards.  Intermittent playing over two years before reaching
the end of the game.  I simply did not have the will or notion to risk
throwing that away and starting over, thus never seeing the end of the game.
I was able to kill the balrog at 37th level only by the most exquisite and
masterful cheating, in addition to potions of invulnerability and other 
"normal" aids.  My finishing score was the lowest for anyone who had ever 
played the game and finished before.  I attribute this to gaining levels
faster than I gained "points", because I never had to backtrack from life
loss and such--it is my understanding that you gain "points" regardless of
what happens to your experience.  This did not matter to me, because I wasn't
playing for points, I didn't care what my rank was, I only wanted to finish
the game.  And, of course, play with the neat new and powerful magic items.
I think I managed to do both, and leach just about all the enjoyment I 
possibly could have out of the game.  So I'm happy.

And now I have all the time I want for . . . uh . . .

Jay/"Timewaster"/Robear
Baron Thod of Ulm, on uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

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Baron Thod of Ulm, uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.moria