A month or so ago, I checked speedrun.com to see if this game had a speedrun of it and couldn't find anything. So I've been working on routing the game on/off. I've also been working to crack the password system, since thus far the only source of information that I know of is the incomplete password guide on gamefaqs.

Passwords are divided into four rows with 6 columns on one side and 6 on the other. Each slot in the password system can contain a letter or number value.

The letter/number choices omit some letters such as A, and O (the latter because there is a number 0). These omissions are deliberate: There are exactly 31 different possibilities for any given slot to hold.

The first two rows contain hobbit information. Each hobbit gets a set of three slots which hold their armor, weapon, and level. The game calculates what their effective strength/defense is. The game only displays the last two digits of power/defense, but I think that the underlying value is allowed to exceed 99. I'm going to investigate that at some point.

The third row is the interesting row. I'm going to refer to this row as row C, with slots numbered from 1 to 12. So, for example, C1 is the left-most value on this third row.

C1: This slot determines where you start. B is the bridge after the shire, up to L for the Moria door. M and N are used for places in Moria, supposedly, but I can't get them to work.

C2 to C9 are used for event flags. Event flags are stored as a single bit in a single slot. Event flags are mostly for storing what doors have been opened, and what people you've got to join your party. Since there are 31 possible values, there are 5 different bits that can be independently of each other.

Since doors are never closed, and events never untriggered, this is why the values on row C tend to go higher as you progress (some coming to 9).

You may ask what stops you from entering, say, all 9's on the C row? C10, C11, and C12 are checksums.

C10 is a checksum of your current party. It's computed by adding the digit values of your party. An empty slot is 0, B is 1, and 9 is 31. Checksums in this game are computed by adding the slots together, then shaving off everything above 32.

C11 is a checksum of C1 to C9. The same checksumming process is used again.

C12 is a checksum of your inventory code.

You can use that to your advantage to manipulate saves to give yourself items. You can, for example, have all items in the game by setting your inventory code to all 9's and putting Y in the checksum.

I'll skip the inventory part for now. Once I figure out everything (I don't know what some of the flags are for), I'll upload a complete guide and maybe even make a web thing so people can set their own password.

So, what's all this have to do with the password glitch?

Some of the blame falls on the password loading system. If you have the flags for Sam and Merry set but they're dead, the flags go bonkers. Bonkers flags are why the gate to the elves suddenly opens up.

But what about the Moria door? When you're going through the Barrow Downs, you'll find a key early on, and have to open a tomb. The first tomb you open is on the right side of a foggy screen soon after you get the first key.

This tomb's open flag is the flag of the Moria door.

If you play through the game normally, the Moria door won't be open. But if you reload the game, the same flag that maps to that tomb door ALSO maps to the Moria door.

Dude that info is amazing. What I am hearing is I can open the first tomb. D-warp back and skip the rest of the Barrow Downs. I assumed that flag for Moria was attached to the final door of the barrows that leads to the crossroads.

Seems somehow Aragorn is connected to the ending trigger, if there was a way to trigger the ending without him that would be great. But when I tried to skip him I would enter the Gardens of Galadriel and the event doesn't trigger. End up softlocked in a looping map with no block/pass set up on the objects.

I'm still in disbelief that it's the first gate! Of all the gates, it's the first one, the required one, the easiest one.

I've heard the softlock mentioned before. I need to make that happen on my side as well. I'm wondering if there's some way to exploit around it with shenanigans, somehow. Maybe pulling up the password screen.

Some more investigation shows that some of the values are being corrupted when the game is restored. There's also one particular flag that shows up in passwords only if you reload the game. I think that's a developer oversight, possibly connected to the Moria door somehow.

It seems that if Merry and Sam are dead but were in your party at some point, the reloading gets weird. It might be visible somewhere in your run, but the short of it is that some flags are being set that shouldn't. That, I think, is why the door to the elf place is open (and that it isn't related to the Moria door).

Another topic I want to explore at some point is Balrog HP and the weapons that are available at the end. The gamefaqs guides say that the endgame weapons are cursed and roll over strength. I'm pretty sure the system only shows the last 2 digits of strength, and not that it rolls over. If that were the case, it'd make a solid reason to have Aragorn (huge hitting power).

Any weapon/armour seems to roll over your stats if your natural stats are getting too high, the don't cap at 99 but instead roll over. It happened to Peebs casual play with an Elven Sword or something.

That being said, being really low level and getting Aragorns best sword may actually work. As it stands Frodo is easily outputting the highest damage but if Aragorn can top that with the ultimate sword and not go out of the way to get it that may be a thing. I think his sword is in Balrog room anyway.