With the first Mines of Moria patch now live, the Lord of the Rings Online team found it to be a good time to publish its newest hero's guide, which takes us through the Silvertine Lodes.

Deep in the belly of the great Misty Mountain peak called Celebdil by the Elves, Zirak-zigil by the Dwarves, and Silvertine by Men, one of the great quarries of Khazad-dûm lays in shadow and dust, waiting for its restoration, waiting for the echoes of pick-axes and miners’ songs to fill its empty caverns and tunnels once more. This deep place, known as the Silvertine Lodes, once glittered with ore and shone with the light of crystal lamps glinting off raw mithril . Now it gapes like a hole not just in the earth but in the image of Khazad-dûm.

These guides are always entertaining and full of lore. While it's informative when the dev diaries focus on gameplay, it's post like this that bring Tolkien's amazing world to the forefront. You can keep reading here or below.

Deep in the belly of the great Misty Mountain peak called Celebdil by the Elves, Zirak-zigil by the Dwarves, and Silvertine by Men, one of the great quarries of Khazad-dûm lays in shadow and dust, waiting for its restoration, waiting for the echoes of pick-axes and miners’ songs to fill its empty caverns and tunnels once more. This deep place, known as the Silvertine Lodes, once glittered with ore and shone with the light of crystal lamps glinting off raw mithril . Now it gapes like a hole not just in the earth but in the image of Khazad-dûm.

Once, many long centuries ago, this hole was begun beneath the mountain to supply stone for great palaces and castles in Khazad-dûm and in far-off kingdoms beyond. But the Dwarves of Moria kept digging, beyond caution or reason, mad in their pursuit of mithril, until the Silvertine Lodes were all but exhausted. They scratched away at the dignity of the mines until little was left but a pit in the earth.

When the Dwarves were forced to abandon Moria, to retreat before the terror of Durin’s Bane, the Silvertine Lodes were left dark and empty for many lifetimes. As happens with any dark place in Middle-earth, creatures and minions of the Shadow seeped in and laid claim to the place. So it is that now, though carved out and built up by the Dwarves, the Silvertine Lodes sprawl dark and terrible. They form a gap in the hopes of the Free Peoples, making for both a settler’s nightmare and an explorer’s challenge.

The Deep Descent

New travelers to the Silvertine Lodes are most likely to enter the region from the Great Delving in the north, by way of the gateway called the Stone Council. Here, just across the border into the Silvertine Lodes—a short jaunt from the lively refuge of the Free People in the Dolven-view—the sole expedition post in the region stands at the edge of the mines, offering explorers one last chance for camaraderie before they plunge into the dark tunnels that beckon beyond. Where the refuge in the Great Delving is bright and airy, this somber camp huddles nervously amid crumbled passageways.

They call it the Deep Descent.

This is the staging ground for journeys to the south. It was from here that the most recent expedition group bound for the Waterworks set out, though no safe path yet connects that region in the south to this camp. Here, smart explorers and adventurers setting out to rediscover or tame the Silvertine Lodes can coordinate their actions with the planners from the Moria expedition.

There’s much to be done, and too few brave enough to do it: seek out untapped veins of Khazad-copper and Khazad-tin, locate and rescue poor prior travelers who have fallen lost between the Deep Descent and the Waterworks, antagonize the goblins who have claimed the cracked caverns north of the region’s old palatial district, squash the giant bugs in their mineshaft hives. . . .

In any case, prepare for a long and perilous hike beneath a dark and uncaring ceiling of stone. Once you leave the Deep Descent, you risk wandering into passages with no lights or lanterns but those you bring with you. Those passages may be dark, but they are not empty. There are things lurking in the blackness of the mines that do not need light by which to hunt.

The Mansions in the East

Just south of the Deep Descent, the road splits to the east and to the west. The west fork leads to the mineshafts and cart tracks that make up the bulk of the Silvertine Lodes. The east fork exits out to a curious combination of spaces known altogether as Gamil Filik.

The familiar shapes of jagged arches zigzag out from rocks that have sunken and settled poorly in the centuries since this place was abandoned. Once-great works of Dwarf masonry—colossal heads spitting out waterfalls, slouching scaffolds of ancient timbers—stand worn and beaten amid huge boulders and heaps of stone. Some of these serve as evidence of this place’s long and sad mistreatment at the hands of goblins, but this northeastern corner of the Silvertine Lodes has always sat unfinished.

The floors of these caverns have long since cracked and warped, their yawning fissures revealing glowing crystals and a deep channel of glittering water. The Dwarves of old laid down metal grilles fitted precisely to these cracks, creating a solid and stable floor without sacrificing the natural light and beauty of the rock. Centuries later, these floors remain, holding traveler and trespasser alike suspended above a fatal drop.

Even on these metal floors, cowardly and sneaky goblins manage ambushes against intruders in their caves. For every spear-bearing goblin guard, assume a stealthy goblin stalks nearby. They know these caverns now better than any living Dwarf, and more is the pity for that.

From here, all the way south along the eastern edge of the region, vacant mansions and a grandiose arched tower topped with the carved, stone heads of Dwarf-lords dominate the Silvertine Lodes. But so feral and foolish are goblin-kind that they have chosen only the caves and tunnels of the northern end of Gamil Filik as home for their crude huts. They gather in wide caves on the verge of the old Dwarf-manses, afraid even in the absence of the great lords of Khazad-dûm to take the finer of Moria’s homes for their own.

At the feet of that great, many-headed tower, a canal runs out from beneath the cracked floor of the nearby caves. Built up around it sit bluish stately buildings topped with obelisks and steeple-like turrets. A bridge beyond a broken staircase connects a proud palace to that huge tower. What age-old secrets that palace and the tower hide sit so close now, yet remain unreachable still. Aglow with the light of ancient lamps and visible from all along the canal-side avenue, these places taunt new explorers with a reminder: Some of Moria’s secrets may never be reclaimed. Who knows what hidden places await behind closed and invisible Dwarf-doors?

This once-rich neighborhood must have housed the overseers of the nearby mines. Some of these buildings may have played home to the architects and planners whose visions transformed the raw ore into wealth and the solid stone into a city. Others may even have belonged to the mithril-hungry lords whose insatiable greed ultimately cost the Dwarves their dominion over Moria.

Today the avenue belongs to Moria’s wild creatures. Lumbering, spiny-haired Deep-claws roam the steps of once-dignified buildings. Luminous, many-fanged Glow-worms inch through the gravelly streets in search of food.

At the southern edge of this area, the avenue gives way to an old catacomb of stacked stones and rustic statues. Follow the old corridors south and downward, through misted air and behind the great waterfalls known as Durin’s Beard, to reach the Waterworks beyond. Duck west through a hole in the corridor to reach the southern edge of the Silvertine Lodes’ great central quarry.

The Mines in the West

Winding mine tunnels and a cavernous, subterranean quarry dominate and define the Silvertine Lodes. In two places in the north, entrances lead from the Great Delving into the upper reaches of the mines. In the south, the region drops into the flooded cave of the Waterworks. There are no other exits. In between, amid shadows and rock, dangerous fangs and claws, perilous pits, and precarious heights lie in wait.

The quarry spreads out beneath hulking stalactites hanging from the ceiling like inverted mountains. Those growths, supported by massive stone-crafted columns, anchor a network of wooden gangways that overhang the quarry floor and, in some places, grant access to the upper mine tunnels, where mine-cart tracks serpentine through the dark. In this underground wilderness roam beasts and vermin that seem to serve no master but their own hunger.

One remote mine tunnel breaks through into the Vault of Durin in the Great Delving, but this is a path fit only for the brave and the steady. Here, as well as in a tangle of tunnels nearer the quarry’s heart, the vile species of gredbyg keep watch over their swollen queens. The grinding chatter of grodbog-laborers regularly shatters the quiet of the dead mines as hundred-legged hive-defenders probe the dark with their arm-long antennae. Farther south, a larger nest of grodbog-eggs glows at the shadowed edge of the quarry.

In between, Deep-claws the size of Wargs and gliding dragonets infected with foul disease stalk the mines. More eerie green glow-worms squirm in the dark here, living off the carrion their larger neighbors leave behind.

The mine-tracks themselves lay torn and twisted. Caves have collapsed. Bridges have fallen away into bottomless chasms. Was it time that ravaged the mine-works? Was it the fleeing miners? Was it some defiling force in the time of Durin’s Bane?

Some machinery remains. Some gantries and scaffolds still grant access to remote parts of the mine floor and quarry ceiling. Most notable among these must be the timber supports anchored on the quarry’s huge stalactites.

At the heart of the quarry, a deep pit falls away into nothingness. Peering over the edge of this shaft, at the sight of the spiraling ramps clinging to its sides and the timber supports vanishing into the deep, it’s easy to imagine horrible things swooping up out of the emptiness—things worth retreating from. The bravery, cunning, and greed it must have taken to delve such depths can barely be fathomed.

In those depths, though, the Dwarves of old saw not only wealth but security. Into the side of that deep pit, they carved a door, and behind that door they dug a breathtaking vault, perhaps knowing that only the bravest souls would venture down to find it. That vault, now known as the Forgotten Treasury, has been rediscovered—but not only by Dwarves.

The Forgotten Treasury

With greed comes fear, and fortunes won by such means must be protected. The Dwarves who dug this vault sought to protect their wealth, it’s true, but they were also brilliant artists and crafters with vision.

The Forgotten Treasury stands draped in wafting webs. Rubble crowds the floor. The rotting remains of dead Dwarves lie scattered where they fell at the feet of berserk Orcs. It is a vault, but also a tomb and a battleground now. Those who venture into this instance face fierce and crazed foes.

But the battle will be fought under the mystifying lights of a bright crystal, beneath the eyes of grand statues with glowing axes, and at the feet of a proud Dwarf-lord. This vault’s greatest treasure may be the details of its own construction. Let any would-be savior of Moria who laments the greed of Khazad-dûm during a dark walk through the Silvertine Lodes also remember the Dwarves’ vision and majesty. They took great wealth from the earth, but they treasured it too.