I have the entire Wilderness area of Moria now mapped out. It doesn’t appear as a true outdoor map but instead looks much like a dungeon filled with twisting corridors and rooms. It will be years still before we see a computer game using a graphical representation of an outdoor map.
The highlighted areas represent the Forest, Desert, Mountains, and Caves. Each of these four different terrains can be thought of as dungeons to be explored. Each of the terrain types have 60 levels that need to be mapped out and explored. The size of each level is enormous. The other two highlighted areas represent two different ways to get into the city. The largest overall quest in Moria is to find the Reaper’s Ring. The ring is randomly placed on level 1 and then moves down a level each time it is found. It may be found in any of the four terrains, so the search may be long and arduous. I had recently checked and the last person to have found the ring did so on level 55. So the ring is on level 56 of one of the four terrains: forest, desert, mountain, or caves.
I decided to start with the Forest terrain and I am currently mapping out level 2 (only 54 more levels to map out!). I have a 25% chance of finding it in this particular terrain so wish me luck. I am sure I will not be that lucky and odds are more likely that the ring will be found in the last place I look. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sharpen my pencil…