The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria starts off unceremoniously with your character getting stuck in a mine. You learn the controls and go through the tutorial, but then, what happens afterwards? Well, the game lets you roam around freely, and it’s up to you to figure things out.

Thankfully, we got quite a bit of experience with this game, and we can show you some of the more nuanced things that you may not have figured out at first.

Below are our top 5 beginner tips for The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria:

5- Don’t be a coward, fighting is good

The mines of Moria are filled with orcs, goblins, and all sorts of dangerous animals. They are incredibly threatening and can do a lot of damage, but fighting them is always beneficial.

The first enemies that will gang up on you will most likely be wolves, and they are a fantastic source of early game food and leather scraps.

You’ll be fighting orcs and goblins by the time you start building your armor sets, and they too are a great source of materials. Do not be discouraged by the fact that their attacks do a lot of damage to your armor sets, to the point of breaking them.

Both orcs and goblins drop metal fragments, which can be used to repair your equipment and craft important things, like light sources. The enemies drop a lot of it, so you’ll always have enough to both repair your armor and save up for later.

4- The glossary is extremely helpful

At some point, you’ll unlock a new recipe but have no idea on where one of the ingredients can be found. Don’t worry, that’s completely normal.

The in-game glossary has information about everything in the game, including materials you are close to finding. By pressing tab and navigating to the glossary icon, players will be able to find information on every resource they collected or currently require.

Not only that, but the glossary also stores information about characters, locations, enemies, and quests. If you are ever stuck or confused, make sure to dig around in the glossary’s many entries.

3- Pick your weapon carefully, or you might regret it

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is pretty straightforward about its combat, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t right tools for each job.

Players will be faced with a plethora of creatures, ranging from small animals to massive cave trolls, and even armored orc bosses. Make sure you always have the right tool for the job by equipping the correct weapon type.

Armored enemies have a natural resistance to attacks done by slashing and piercing weapons, but are weak to being bludgeoned. Certain weapon enchantments can also do more damage to specific enemy types, like the Orcsbane rune, which makes every attack against an Orc a critical hit.

Damage colors are a good indication of what works and what doesn’t: Grey means you are doing reduced damage, white means you are doing regular damage, and yellow means you are doing critical damage.

If you are using the correct rune and weapon type, but still happen to be doing grey damage, it’s time to upgrade your weapons.

2- A prepared dwarf is never in trouble

The beginning of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria can be a bit cumbersome, as your dwarves start out with literally quite nothing to their names.

One of the first things that players will unlock is the meal table, which allows you to eat and completely restore both your health and hunger, but going back to your base every time you need a snack can be cumbersome.

Players can later unlock the oven, which is capable of crafting complex rations, which fill you up more and can be eaten anywhere. Not only that, but by discovering leather you’ll be able to also craft a drinking canteen. This means that players can carry both stamina-regenerating ale and health-regenerating rations to satiate themselves outside of their base.

Making use of these new commodities means that players will be able to extend their journeys for much longer, without needing to compromise on their trips. Do make sure to sleep often, though, as your stamina will be capped if you push your dwarf too far.

1- They remember it so you don’t have to

Quite frequently in your cave explorations you’ll bump into a resource node you either can’t mine or don’t have the time to stop for. There’s a good chance you’ll need whatever resource that is later, and thankfully, you can place a waypoint to remember it’s there.

Generally, the best course of action is to put down a waypoint wherever you have unfinished business, be it a statue you didn’t repair, an ore vein you saved for later, or at an enemy camp you don’t feel like challenging yet.

Having them organized by picking different icons is really important, and writing down what they actually are is even better. Trust me, marking down every ore node you find is really useful, but it becomes a guessing game if you don’t write down what that ore actually was.

You can save a lot of time when gathering older resources by always having a waypoint in your pocket, and they always pay off when you need them.

Well, there you go, those are our top 5 beginner tips for The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. We hope you are having a great time with the game, and that you haven’t gotten too lost with its more hands-off approach.

If you want to know more, consider reading our review for the game (we really liked it!)

We’ll be covering the game further, so keep an eye out for more Niche Gamer guides, and make sure to always keep a torch and some ale handy.

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is now available on Microsoft Windows (through the Epic Games Store). PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S ports are set to release December 5, 2023, and Early 2024, respectively.