In the Beginning

Contents:


Introduction:

Once upon a time, there was a game called moria. It was a pretty good game, and a lot of people really enjoyed playing it. As time went by, more people suggested changes to the game, adding more items, more monsters, and more ways to die. This resulted in a difficult game to win.

As more time went by, news groups were created out of the murk with names like rec.games.moria where people could gloat over their victories and provide hints and answers to questions that the ignorant masses posed. However, once a question was asked and answered, the piece of advice was lost forever and would often be reasked in a matter of weeks.

Within this file is a large collection of lore about the game of Moria. Some of it may not be true, but I have made the best effort possible to verify all of the information contained herein. Much of it has been verified, corrected, or added since the start of editing of this document before it was ever posted to the network.

Also, we would like to request that any corrections, modifications, suggestions, etc. be E-mailed directly to mrmarcel@eos.ncsu.edu and not posted to the net. We will attempt to verify any information sent us and then we will both add it to the spoiler file (for the next release) and post an official correction/addition to rec.games.moria.

Note: Please do not send E-mail to us asking for a copy of Moria itself (or the source code, etc). We do not honor these requests, and often just ignore them.

Be warned: If you use the knowledge contained herein, your game will never be the same. Your horizons will suddenly be expanded, but you may end up thinking that the game is less than it once was. That is the risk you must take if you choose to read ths file.

Good luck, and happy adventuring!


Revision History:

In order to keep a decent idea of how the spoiler file is progressing, we have set up an official policy on how Revision Numbers will change. Any minor revisions, corrections, or amplifications will advance the revision number by .01. New sections added, or complete re-writes of existing sections will advance the revision number of .10. Any complete rewrite of the entire file (just in case - it might actually happen) will advance the revision number to the next integer.

A fairly recent version of the spoilers can be downloaded via FTP from ftp.cis.ksu.edu in the directory '/pub/Games/Moria/doc/spoilers*' Because this FTP site is not under my control, minor changes to the spoilers file will be saved up. [FTP administrators don't like it if you bug them with a new upload every few days.]

The MOST recent version can be found using WWW to browse through the spoilers online. This can be found at:

   http://www.piratehaven.org/~beej/moria/spoilers1.2.html
The Moria Spoilers file was converted to .HTML by 'Beej' and is updated continuously. The complete spoilers file can also be downloaded using a link at this WWW site. This link will download the newest version of the spoiler file.

Click here to get the latest text version of the spoilers.


Credits:

Well, this should actually be a very large list. Among others, it should include almost everyone who has posted any hints of value to the net within about the last decade. Some people who have made contributions to the cause of these spoilers above and beyond the call of duty, however, are listed here:
Beej!
Michael Beresis
Sharon L. Casteel
William Chuang
Aaron M. Clements
James Frye
David Grabiner
Maarten Hazewinkel
Ben Hodson
Jeremy Seip
Kevin Souter
Jon Vessey
Boudewijn Wayers
Nicholas C. Weaver

io20084@maine.maine.edu
petitc@rpi.edu

If any of the rest of you out there know you contributed something to the cause, but don't see your name listed here - don't get us wrong. It's not that we're ungrateful! We probably just nuked your name by mistake!

Note: All names are listed in alphabetical order by last name, and not by order of importance of contribution.


Using The Spoilers:

There's really not much to say on this subject, other than a few intuitive pointers. How you use the spoilers is simple: You read them, and apply the knowledge contained within to your game of moria.

The section titles tend to be fairly unique, and are always followed by a colon. This should make it very simple to get to whatever section you want quickly. Just load the file into your editor (or if you're on a unix system, even use 'more' for that matter), and use the search function to look for the section. For instance, from within more or vi, use the slash key ("/") and what you'd like to search for ("Armor:" for example)>

This technique is also very useful for finding every reference to a particular topic. If you'd like to know about speed in moria, just search for every occurance of the word "speed" in the file.