NPPMoria Competition

[Wraitheist]

Hey guys, where can I find some info about this variant? I know nothing about it and would like to see a summary of how the game is different from Angband. I'm just not sure how anything works. Any tips?

[buzzkill]

As I understand it, never having actually played it, it's an somewhat authentic recreation of old school Moria built upon the NPP codebase. It probably varies from modern Angband in too many ways to concisely list.

[Derakon]

Broadly speaking, to get from Angband to Moria you strip out most of the enemies; all artifacts; lots of consumables, jewelry, weapons, and armor; all "high" resists and status protections except Free Action; dungeon spellbooks; several player races; 50 dungeon levels and 10 character levels; probably a bunch more besides that I can't recall off the top of my head.

And then you add Wands of Wall Building and replace Morgoth with the Balrog.

In short, Angband : PosChengband :: Moria : Angband.

[Malak Darkhunter]

It's like a simplified version of angband in a way..no uniques except end game bosses, The Evil Iggy, and The Balrog of Moria. Very few Ego weapons and no artifacts except the phial of galadrial. Main ego weapons are (flametounge) (frostbrand) (Defender) and the best in the game(Holy Avenger). There is no posion resistance, only the basic 4 are covered (fire,cold,lightning,acid). Armours of resistance are best they cover all 4. Their is no monster escorts, only single generated monsters, however sometimes they are bunched together in rooms or vaults. you can reach max character level of 40, you have the basic 4 spellbooks for priests and magic users, very similar to spells in angband today, however their is no artifact books. their is only the basic character races, (no High-Elfs) (no Duandan), so their is no "easy classes" to beat the game with... 1 important thing to note is that all classes are capable of reaching the same character abilitiy stats which is maxed at 18/100. you can't go over 18/100, so even with character race abiltiy modifiers you still can reach 18/100 stats in every ability but not over that number. Undead do a huge amount of damage in this game, life drain attacks can kill you very very fast so beware that one.
other things that are very imporatant is Free action and see invisible which is availiable on a few items in the game. Their is a few interesting items in the game but they are kind of rare..rings of speed, damage, to hit, amulets of the magi, crowns of seeing etc, so their is enough trinkets to keep you searching for more. That's about all I can think of at the moment, I am a very old time player of moria, so if you have any questions just ask and I will help however i can.

[nppangband]

Everything above is correct. Moria was created in the early 80s. In the late 80s, a group of college students created Angband by starting with Moria and adding many new features (uniques, artifacts, vaults, many more ego items, a couple more character reces, many more monsters, doubled the size of the dungeon, 5 more spellbooks for each realm, a player home and black market, and the list goes on....).

Deveopment stopped on Moria in the early 90s, and eventually people lost interest, although it is remembered fondly. In the meantime, Angband has been actively maintained and developed (for the most part) since its creation.

The Moria codebase is old, by modern standards difficult to read/understand, it can only be complied with great difficulty, and it lacks any modern ports (linux, mac). So the simplest way for me to revive Moria was to start with the modern Angband port, and "turn off" Angband features and de-scope the game until what remained is Moria, with a more modern UI and ports.

In general, Moria is a bit less forgiving than Angband. While a significantly shorter game, lack of poison resistance means more opportunities to die quickly. For example, a healthy Ancient Chromatic Dragon breathing poison will always kill even the most powerful player.

[Wraitheist]

Thanks for the incredibly helpful replies, great info there. Now that I feel a bit more prepared, back in I go!