The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria’s next major update adds a sandbox mode and single player pause

While we felt it wasn’t an amazing game, we quite liked The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria’s dwarven survival antics. It was a bit of cosy fun for a group of pals, and thankfully, open-ended co-op play looks to be the focus of the next big update, which adds a new sandbox mode that lets you pick rocks and sink pints free of storyline constraints. Not to mention new armour, weapons, and quality of life improvements like the ability to pause your single player sessions.

Set to launch on April 4th, the new sandbox mode also makes sweeping changes to the game’s world generation system. In their earlier blog post, the devs said it “lets the procedural generation go wild”, where only the Doors Of Durin and Dimrill Gate are where you expect them. “Everything else is remixed, scrambled and placed in Khazad-dum’s various Levels and Deeps.” You can also expect new environments, like a lovely Elven spot, as well as new weapon and armour recipes, too.

The update also includes enhancements to building systems, as well as ornamental building pieces like rugs, lanterns, and ceilings to make your bases even snazzier. In their “Forge Talk” dev discussion, the developers mention that touching certain bits of buildings shouldn’t make them explode anymore, which is nice. And building stability is now, well, way more stable. This means those who like to build upwards shouldn’t find their builds under constant stress all the time.

But perhaps one of the most meaningful changes is the addition of a pause button for those moments where you need to like, go to the bathroom or grab a drink, without having your character die in the corner you’ve left them facing. It’s only available in solo and offline play, however.

There’s loads of other little additions, including the option to change the difficulty of the game with options designed for single player, groups, or story-focused players. There’s better sound effects when you’re bashing orcs in combat, and disconnects should be less frequent. The list of fixes sounds enormous. For more, I recommend giving the Forge Talk transcription a glance, which you can find in the aforementioned blog post.