"The road goes ever on and on..."
The Lord of the Rings Mod: Bringing Middle-earth to Minecraft is a massive, fan-made expansion mod for Minecraft, based on the lore of Tolkien's Legendarium.
Beginning development by sole programmer Mevans in December 2012, the Lord of the Rings Mod
is an ambitious attempt to faithfully adapt Tolkien's works into Minecraft. He appears to have succeeded, adding countless major features, and revamping old ones from the original game. Eight years and thirty-six updates later, it continues development to this day. There is now also the Renewed version — an ongoing port to newer Minecraft versions.
The Lord of the Rings Mod: Bringing Middle-earth to Minecraft contains examples of:
- Adaptational Diversity: As opposed to having a primarily Medieval European Fantasy setting, the mod adds in new non-canon factions as analogues to Middle Eastern, African and Asian cultures. Great care has been taken to not contradict the established canon and they are based on canonical sketches.
- Adaptation Expansion: A big one for this mod. Tolkien's canon map of Middle-earth shows just the northwest part of the world. But this is Minecraft, and you can explore anywhere. So naturally the mod's map goes beyond the borders and adds the whole continent of Middle-earth with Harad and Rhun as Africa/Asia analogues. These regions are not canon, but they are based on canonical sketches.
- Addressing the Player: Non Player Characters will address you by your Minecraft username.
- Alliance Meter: One of the core features of the mod. Each of the mod's factions has one (Gondor, Rohan, Mordor, ect.) Killing enemies and performing quests give alignment, killing allies takes it away. The more alignment points you have with a faction, the more things you can do with them (trading, unit hiring, ect.)
- Ascended Extra: The Haradrim (especially Far Haradrim), Half-trolls, and Easterlings, who are relatively minor groups in the original story. This mod makes them into complete playable factions in their own right with not only their own custom map regions and waypoints, but actual invented backstories and lore.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
- The names of the Easterling cities, which have a vaguely Eastern flavor but no meaning in either real life or Tolkien's languages.
- Subverted with Harad though — most of the names the mod team created for Harad aren't just gibberish but do have actual meanings, using a version of Neo-Adunaic (based on Tolkien's Numenorean language).
- Bag of Holding: Pouches come in small, medium, and large variants, and can hold any item in the game (except more pouches.)
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The elves in Utumno. Hell, after thousands of years of it you wouldn't be too happy either.
- Cooking Mechanics: Or more brewing in this case. The mod adds an alcohol system that lets you brew all kinds of different drinks in barrels by combining various foodstuffs and water.
- Damage Discrimination: The Mallorn Ent and Hill-Troll Chieftain bosses do this. Any damage not dealt directly by the player's melee / ranged attacks, whatever its source, is capped at 1. Makes NPCs less effective at helping out, though you can't fault their spirit.
- Dungeon Crawling: The pits of Utumno.
- Escape Rope: The beam of light that you build to let you exit Utumno.
- Foreboding Architecture: The entrance to Utumno.
- Friend to All Children: Gain enough Hobbit alignment, and you will become one, with Hobbit children following you all over the Shire.
- Hard-Coded Hostility: Utumno is a faction with its own alignment meter, but unlike the other factions they are always hostile and you can't earn any alignment with them.
- Hate Plague: The Orcs, when they randomly break out into skirmishes.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Gandalf in the tutorial, telling the player to "press L" to open the map.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: NPCs will address you by your Minecraft username in their random dialogue and quest descriptions.
- Hidden Elf Village: While not entirely neutral, the Elves of the Woodland Realm don't care much of what happens outside their borders, and won't take kindly to strangers visiting their home.
- Hobbits: Seen all across the Shire, as you would expect, living normal Hobbit lives, with little to no conflict.
- I Can't Reach It/It's Up to You: NPCs will request you to do just about anything, from menial tasks such as picking pears, to great feats like killing trolls. (You won't get help with any of it, of course.)
- In-Universe Game Clock: The Lord of the Rings Mod uses the Shire Reckoning calendar, telling the date at the start of day. Each day lasts forty minutes, twice the length of vanilla Minecraft days.
- Loading Screen: Basically the original Minecraft loading screen, but with quotes from the Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit at the bottom.
- Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: One of two types of mini-quests found in the game. NPCs will ask you to kill a certain amount of a mob from an enemy faction, such as Mordor orcs, Mirkwood Spiders, or Rohirrim.
- Mordor: Naturally.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: The models for the various African animals found in Harad originated from Mevans' previous Minecraft mod, The Lion King Mod.
- Nice Day, Deadly Night: Depending on which factions you align yourself with. An evil player will likely find this inverted.
- One-Man Army: By drinking a gulp of Athelas brewed to its potent stage, the player will, for a few minutes, become a force of ultimate destruction; if equipped with the right combat tools, not even the strongest of trolls can face the mighty of the player alone.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same/Have I Mentioned I Am a Dwarf Today?: A very accurate representation of Tolkien's Dwarves, they make their home in the Blue Mountains and the Iron Hills, spending their time underground, loving the wealth found there above all else. And man, are they PROUD of it.
- Our Elves Are Different: Typical Tolkien Elves. There's the High Elves of Lindon and Rivendell, the Galadhrim of Lothlrien, the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, and the Elves of Dorwinion. While they all behave differently, they all share this in common.
- Palette Swap: Dwarven and Blue Dwarven gear in the initial version. Averted in the Renewed version, where they have separate designs.
- Quest Giver: True to form, NPCs who have a mini-quest on offer are indicated by a big floating exclamation mark above their heads.
- Random Event: In an attempt to make Middle-earth feel more alive, there's quite a few. (work-in-progress)
- Bandits will spawn near the player randomly in the wilder regions of the world, attempting to steal from the player's inventory.
- Traders from all throughout the world will randomly spawn in regions friendly to their respective faction.
- Invasions will randomly occur, in which waves of enemies spawn in a short time.
- Mini-quests are almost entirely random. NPCs will randomly generate them, with random requests selected from a variety of categories, with random amounts required.
- Skybox: While vanilla Minecraft had skyboxes of its own, the ones found in The Lord of the Rings Mod are far more detailed.
- Sprint Shoes: The Wood-elven scout armour set. (And not just the shoes!)
- Starter Equipment:
- As soon as you enter Middle-earth, Gandalf appears with a tutorial quest which runs you through the basics of the mod's UI. While following his quest, Gandalf will give you your first items, including the Red Book (your handy-dandy quest log), and pouches of various sizes.
- Beyond the tutorial, you can find all the food you could ever need before you even encounter an orc, thanks to the countless Hobbit holes and taverns strewn about.
- Temple of Doom: Utumno, built in ages past, is the ruined fortress of Melkor, hidden deep into the frozen wastes of Forodwaith. The endless dark halls of this dungeon await bold adventurers who seek fame and glory, and great treasures too.
- Tree Top Town: Lothlorien and, to a lesser extent, the Woodland Realm.
- Trespassing Hero: So long as those Hobbits don't hate you already, go right ahead and invade all the Hobbit holes you want! No one seems to care anyways, so knock yourself out.
- Vestigial Empire: The Tauredain people are nothing but a shadow of their old and glorious past, when powerful Emperors ruled the jungles of Far Harad.
- Walk into Mordor: The only alternative to entering Mordor this way would be to fast travel, but that's only available after entering the region the first time, and only if you're friendly with the faction of Mordor. So everyone has to take this route at least once if you want to enter the region.
- War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Being set in such a low-poly, family-friendly game such as Minecraft arguably has this result on the War of the Ring.
- Warp Whistle: The mod's fast-travel system. No whistle, though — just a map.
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You Look Familiar: Character textures are assigned to each Elf, Dwarf, Orc, etc randomly. But seeing as there are only so many to pick from for the hundreds of NPCs you'll see on your journey, expect to see a LOT of clones.
