Much has been said about the Balrog in Mines of Moria, but at the recent European preview event Renkosi was shown with a small group of community members how some of that epic battle would unfold.
As expected you fight the Balrog in an session play instance. We were not shown the turn of events that brought you to it, but when the curtains were opened for us we were playing a dwarf “Nafni” who was helping Durin VI, show some Elves the Mithril mines. After killing a few small beasties that were getting in the way you arrive at the rock face, and help to dig out some of the ore.
But as you clear out a rock, the way is open, and cave lies beyond: what’s that we can see lurking in the distance…
Ah well, whatever maybe we can kill it!
You know, it does look awfully big, mean and nasty, are you sure we can take it out?
Ok, it is really big, and all the elves just DFed on us, that just leaves us two, are you really sure about this?
Oh feck, there’s been a cave in and we are trapped. Right, I’ll just stand at the back and heal you…
I think we should take a few steps back, I’m getting some agro here!
I think we are going to die! Help!
Quick, they dug us out, we need to run away!
Oh noes, he followed us…
To recap: The Balrog is dead in the snow but we all want to fight him, the solution was natural, to expose players to the history of Moria. You find yourself transported back in time in session play, the instance starts with you talking to Durin IV in his throne room. Together you are going to show some visitors, the treasures of the dwarves. The party consists of some elves from Lothlorian (matching the history in the books), you are playing one of the dwarves of the party. Something has stirred up some of the cave claws, so before you go to look for the Mithril, you need to take care of them first. Then you can go and try to get some Mithril, and start digging. This pulls down a wall and shows the unfriendly Balrog. It is the worst beast in middle earth with 500k hit points. After a cinematic view to show what is happening, you get stuck in the Balrog room, you can’t really do any damage, so you need to run for a bit, and eventually find the way out.
Jeffrey Steefel also noted that Mithril is very hard to find, and it is not something that players are likely to find any time soon, as it would of course destroy the economy.