How to complete any quest in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria isn’t just a survival/crafting game—you'll have to complete quests throughout the game, and many of them can be confusing if you don’t know what to do ahead of time. Luckily, they’re repetitive enough that there are a few tips you can keep in mind that will help you complete every quest in the game, no matter how far you’ve progressed.
Restore Dwarven Statues near your objective
Combat in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria isn’t easy, and it’s exponentially more difficult if you have underleveled equipment or weapons. Often, this can make or break your ability to move forward with certain questlines.
What you should be doing is restoring any Dwarven Statues that you come across as you explore.
Statues give you upgraded recipes that will carry you through any nearby challenges, so don’t get complacent after you’ve crafted a single set of armor or a cool weapon. Statues are also key to finding recipes for necessary equipment (like different pickaxes) or they might grant you resources like Iron or Coal.
You may need to clear the shadows near Statues in order to restore them without taking too much damage. To do this, simply look for a ruined structure within the shadows and restore it. This also makes getting around much easier, especially in connecting areas.
Test out different weapons and combat styles
If you’re struggling against a boss, odds are you’re using the wrong weapon. Despite the fact that every weapon recipe has a level attached to it, weapons of the same level actually have different purposes. For example, armored enemies take more damage from blunt weapons like mallets and battle hammers, while a sword of the same level will be less effective.
Some weapons even seem the same but function differently. For instance, a crossbow is required to beat the Watcher in the Water near the Drain Pumps, which you have to restore in order to progress the story. It can’t be done with a hunting bow.
You can generally tell that different equipment will work better if your character says something about needing a better weapon. However, this voiceline doesn’t always trigger—or worse, your character may say it even when it’s not true. Since it’s unreliable, it’s sometimes better to just experiment if enemies are proving nearly impossible to beat.
Try out different combat styles as well. For example, taking down Orcs and Goblins is easy to do by switching between blocking and attacking. If you use this same strategy on a Troll though, you’ll be defeated before you know it. Blocking a Troll will throw you backward, so you have to dodge its attacks by rolling out of the way.
You can also look into different enchantments for your weapons. Some may be more useful than others depending on the enemy you’re facing. At times, dealing more damage via elementally-charged attacks is better than knocking enemies back when you swing, and vice versa.
Look around
This might sound a bit silly, but there are a lot of quests that are easy to get hung up on because you don’t see what you need to do. For example, fixing the Great Forges requires replacing multiple parts. If you’re not looking carefully, then you may miss a part and get lost trying to figure out how it works.
There are also levers that trigger certain objects, like the Drain Pumps. This is another interaction that’s incredibly easy to miss if you’re not looking carefully.
If you’re stuck in a quest, move your character around and get close to every single item you see—when you’re close enough, items you can interact with become highlighted.
Explore everywhere
Every map in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is different, but each has the same number of limited resources (like Black Diamonds). This means that you’ll need to explore the entirety of the map in order to find the resources needed to move on.
This is a bit harder than it might sound. You may think you’ve explored everything until you need something you can’t find. When that happens, check out the minimap. You can spot pathways to other rooms by the doors on corresponding walls. There are also walls on the minimap that are rough and jagged. This generally indicates that something lies beyond them.
Exploring everything also keeps you on track for getting the recipes you need to progress, and helps you find every resource possible. Even if you don’t mine the ore immediately, it’s marked on your map so that you can come back to it if you need it.
Complete the Muznakans
From early on in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, you’ll discover chest-like objects called Muznakans. These display small dolls representing family members, and you’re tasked with finding the lost dolls and putting them back on the Muznakan.
Finding the dolls means looking around on the ground, which is harder to do in some places than others. Dolls are generally located within a few rooms of the Muznakan, but some of them can be quite far away. If you feel like you’ve explored and still can’t find the dolls (or the Muznakan itself), continue going as far as you can—you’ll more than likely run into them.
Once you’ve done so, the Muznakan opens to reveal a cache of resources. Early in the game, completing Muznakans is one of the only ways to progress through quests, and they continue to be a great help throughout the game. They can save you hours of grinding (literally).
Build every building tool possible
At the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, you’ll have access to a Forge and a Hearth, and many of the items you craft only require these basic building tools. However, you’ll start getting new recipes to build quickly, and you’ll need to check regularly that you’ve built the buildings needed to progress.
For example, if you don’t have a Loom, you might not realize that you have access to Leather. If you don’t realize that you have Leather, you’ll potentially miss out on new equipment that’s more effective at killing enemies as you progress further in the game.
The best way to stay up-to-date is by creating a main base somewhere that’s easy to return to and building every new tool as you unlock it. This is much easier to do after you get access to Black Diamonds for Mapstones, so it may be good to wait until you’ve reached the Mines of Moria before committing to a main base.
Between those six steps, you should be able to conquer any quest or main boss that you come across in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. If the game feels too hard, it’s probably because you’re missing something. Hopefully these steps will help you discover what exactly you’ve overlooked.
You can pick up The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria on the Epic Games Store now—and if you’re just getting started, make sure you check out our guide to staying alive in the depths of the Mines of Moria.